Exodus 19

Notes on the verses

Chap. XIX. Ver. 1. In the third month,…. the same day.—This is differently explained, but the most usual interpretation is, on the first day of the third moon, or the forty-sixth day after leaving Egypt. Next day, probably, Moses ascended the mount, and three days after the law was delivered, being the fiftieth day, which was the feast of Pentecost.—Scott and Dr. Clarke. Wilderness of Sinai.—Dr. Shaw describes the desert (or wilderness) of Sinai as a large plain, more than a league in breadth, and nearly three in length, lying open to the N. E. but closed on the south by mount Sinai: called by the Arabs Jibbel Mousa, the mountain of Moses, and sometimes by way of eminence, El Tor, the Mount, is a range of mountains in the Peninsula formed by the isles of the Red sea.

It consists of several peaks, the principal of which are Horeb and Sinai; the former, still called Ored, being on the west, and the latter, called Tur is on the east, at the foot of which is the convent of St. Catherine. (See Niebuhr, Travels.) Dr. Shaw conceives that the wilderness of Sinai, properly so called, is that part which is to the eastward of this mount; so that the removal of the Israelites from Rephidim, which was on the west, to the desert of Sinai, was only removing from one part of the mountain to another.—Bagster.

Ver. 9. Thick cloud.—From the real manifestations of JEHOVAH in a cloud the heathen ascribed similar appearances to their false gods. Thus in Homer Jupiter is described on mount Gargarus, “veiled in a fragrant cloud.”

Minerva enters the Grecian army, “clad in a purple cloud;” when Apollo attended Hector, “a veil of clouds involved his radiant head.”—Bagster.

Ver. 15. Come not at your wives.—But the word your is supplied, and Ainsworth reads, more literally, ‘Come not to a wife;” a prohibition given on some other serious occasions. ((1 Samuel 21:4); (1 Corinthians 7:6).)

Ver. 7. Thou shalt not take, &c.—In an oracle of the Pythoness, mentioned by Herodotus, it is said, that Perjury had had a nameless son, who, though he had neither hands nor feet, speedily overtook the criminal, and destroyed his whole race.—Orient. Lit. No. 196.

Ver. 24. An altar of earth.—Bp. Patrick quotes from Tertullian’s Apology, a remark that, as the ancient Romans, in the time of Numa, had neither sumptuous temples nor images, so they had only altars of turf, formed hastily, and without art.

Ver. 25. Not build it of hewn stone.—The magical figures, carved upon it, as was common among the heathens, particularly the Egyptians.