Fire Mountain - Exodus 24:9-18

24:9-18 - The covenant offered by God has been unanimously accepted by Israel and it has been ratified by a blood sacrifice and now Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the 70 elders are allowed to go up a portion of the mount. This is significant because previously, they had only been allowed to go up a little bit of the way, but now that they had accepted the blood sacrifice, they are allowed into the presence of God. This is just like us, when we accept Christ we are allowed incrementally closer to the presence of God. When we make and keep covenants in the temple, each step is closer to God until we are finally, eventually allowed completely into his presence. But that takes a while, probably not possible in this life, it’s a process.

The words say that “they saw the God of Israel,” whether it was actually God or a manifestation or vision of him, I’m not sure, TB thinks it matters, I don’t. The description is interesting though, explaining, “there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone,” which makes me wonder just what everything else looks like. You know how sometimes you see something so amazing, so beautiful that it just doesn’t make sense, like it doesn’t fit in the world that we know. I wonder if this was like that.

All these men go up the mount to meet God, then God calls Moses further up so that he can receive “tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them.” God has recorded his own version of the covenant and is going to give them to Moses to he can teach the law. This reminds me of when Nephi gets the brass plates from Laban and one of his reasonings is that he can’t teach the law if he doesn’t have a written record of the law, which seems to be a similar sentiment here.

Moses takes Joshua with him and goes even further up on the mountain, and waits for 6 days in a cloud, then on the seventh day, God “called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” Moses is up on the mount for 40 days and 40 nights.

What’s interesting to me is that we know, from the movie because it’s my only frame of reference, that what comes next is that Moses comes down from the mountain with the covenant of God that Israel JUST agreed to and they are partying and acting a fool and blatantly disobeying the covenant they just made. I mean, it’s only 40 days, does society have to devolve without the leadership of ONE man that quickly? Did no one stop and say, “hey let’s just hold on for a couple more days?” But what is the most interesting to me about this is that Moses goes up a mountain, the people are living at the base of this mountain, but at the top where Moses is, “the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.” So not only did they just have a crazy spiritual experience where they agreed to a mutual promise with God, but they were currently watching the top of the mountain, where their spiritual leader was, be devoured in a fire, the likes of which they had probably never seen before, and they were still like “let’s get crazy.” I’d like to think that if I had been watching that, I would have been more in awe then overturning the covenant that we just made WITH GOD. But who am I to judge I guess.