An Old Man and A Large Mountain

July 8, 2009, 9:49 am by dc-agape.

Exodus 19

This chapter is about the preparation at Mount Sinai.  It is rather boring but one interesting thing occurs numerous times.  Moses and YHWH have numerous conversations, each time Moses travels to the top of the mountain and returns to the people at the base of the mountain.  Four times Moses travels to the top of the mountain to speak with YHWH.  We know that YHWH is at the top of the mountain by this verse:

Exodus 19:20 The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain.

Now one thing that must be kept in mind is the size of, what is believed to be, Mount Sinai.  It is 2,285 meters at its top.  And Moses made this round trip four times.  We are talking about climbing up and down 18,000 meters just to talk with YHWH.  For those of you not familiar with meters, 18 kilometers is 11.1 miles.  Not a horrible hike, but remember Moses is over 80 years old, and for each kilometer the slope looks like this.

Now the only problem I truly have with this story is the conversation that Moses has with YHWH.  Christians, today, talk about how mysterious YHWH ways are.  They talk about how YHWH does not want to interfere with freewill.  They talk about following YHWH as being a trust and faith issue.  They talk about how we must use these stories from the Bible to know YHWH.  They talk about knowing YHWH through one-way prayer.  As many times as Moses had direct contact with YHWH, you would think that, if he existed, he would communicate with us once every thousand years or so.  He completely annihilates the freewill of the Egyptians and the Israelites, yet today he is worried our freewill to worship him?  That makes no sense.  Of course, reading through the Book of Judges, it is obvious that even when he shows up, no one trusts him!  Oh, how I am going to enjoy reading that Book!

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