Sinai

In the third month after they left Egypt, they come into the wilderness of Sinai and camp before the mountain. Exodus 19:1 Moses goes up. God offers a covenant. If they will obey His voice and keep His covenant, they will be His treasured possession among all peoples, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The people answer, all that the LORD has spoken we will do. Exodus 19:5 Exodus 19:8

On the third day there is thunder, lightning, a thick cloud, and a very loud trumpet. The mountain is wrapped in smoke. God speaks the ten words. No other gods. No carved image. The name not taken in vain. The Sabbath. Father and mother. No murder, no adultery, no theft, no false witness, no coveting the neighbor's house or wife or life. Exodus 20:1 The people are afraid and ask Moses to listen for them. The book of the covenant follows, case by case. They say again that they will do it. Blood of the covenant is thrown on the altar and on the people. Exodus 24:7 Exodus 24:8

Moses is on the mountain forty days. The people below ask Aaron for gods to go before them. He makes a calf of their gold and says, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt, and he announces a feast to the LORD. Exodus 32:4 The feast is put in the LORD's name and aimed at a statue. Moses comes down, breaks the tablets, burns the calf, and stands in the gate. Who is on the LORD's side? The sons of Levi answer. About three thousand fall. Exodus 32:26 Exodus 32:28

The name, and a tent

Moses asks to see God's glory. God puts him in a cleft and proclaims the name: the LORD, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity, and by no means clearing the guilty. Exodus 34:6 New tablets are written. A tent is made, and the glory fills it so that Moses cannot enter. Exodus 40:34 Leviticus is the worship of that tent, given in this same year, before they march. Numbers will pick up the march and the failure of the spies.

The spies are sent from the wilderness, and they say the land devours its inhabitants. Caleb and Joshua say the LORD is with them and the people should go up. The congregation wants to stone them. The sentence is forty years, a year for each day the spies were in the land, until the generation that refused has fallen. Numbers 14:34 That is the long middle of the timeline's Egypt-to-Jordan stretch. Miriam dies. Aaron dies. Moses strikes a rock he was told to speak to, and he is told he will not bring the assembly into the land. Numbers 20:12 Deuteronomy is his last speaking, on the plains of Moab, the law opened again for a generation that was children at the calf or not yet born.

The year of Sinai is the year of the exodus. The BC estimate travels with it, 1446 or the later reading, and it is not firmer here than it was at the sea. What is firm in the text is the order. Sea, then mountain, then words, then a calf, then a tent, then a refusal, then forty years. The apostle will say the law came in beside the promise, not instead of it, and that it was a guardian until the seed should come. Galatians 3:19 Galatians 3:24 Sinai is not a second plan. It is the holy life of a people already redeemed, who will not keep it, and who will need the same promise Abram believed.