“On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast.
Everyone in the camp trembled.
Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.
As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.“
-Exodus 19:16-19
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?
Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?
Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome
(both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’
Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, ‘What does this mean?’”
-Acts 2:1-12
In the Old Testament of the Bible, we learn that God used Moses to introduce a Covenant (or agreement) with His people. This was called the Covenant of the Law. God gave humanity stewardship over the planet when we were created, but He found He needed to set up rules to keep us from getting injured or killed. Today, we as people understand the need for these rules, and we’ve added to them. Look the many traffic lights in any city of the world, or warnings not to get too close to the edge of a cliff if you’re a hiker. Or signs reminding us to wear masks during a pandemic. Products we purchase have warning labels of choking hazards or expiration dates if food or medicine is involved, lest we eat spoiled meat or take outdated drugs.
The Law (commonly called the “Ten Commandments”) gives us ten rules which, if we ignore them, we will cause resulting harm to our bodies, souls or spirits (or those of other people.) So, in one sense, the Law consists of warnings to each of us such as the signs mentioned above. But another function of the Law is to show us that as fallen creatures, we cannot on our own or through our own devices reconcile ourselves to God. It informs us that our norms are not His norms and our ways are not His ways (Isaiah 55:8.) Many people in our world believe that they will go to heaven because they see themselves as good people. They’ve never killed anyone, though they may have wished someone dead. They might insist that they never stole anything, but perhaps they have cheated on their taxes. They may believe they are faithful to their spouse, but they don’t mind staring longingly at their neighbor when he or she is working in the flower beds. They honor their parents but only when they think their parents deserve to be honored. Or, they act dishonorably or disobediently towards their parents, lying to them for example.
Come as you are
The way for repentant people to be reconciled to God is through God’s grace made available by faith in Jesus, God’s son. It was this Covenant of Grace that was announced at Pentecost around 30 A.D. (on the anniversary of the giving of the Law) by God in the person of the Holy Spirit. To get a complete understanding of the nuances, we need to appreciate certain concepts such as Passover. The point of this blog entry is to show how God announced two major and radically different covenants thousands of years apart in natural and also similiarly supernatural ways.
Almost everyone is familiar with the story of the Israelites who suffered for centuries as slaves in Egypt, until God raised up Moses to deliver them from bondage. Moses prophesized seven different plagues, one-by-one, unless Pharaoh let the Jews go, but each time after agreeing to release the Jews, Pharaoh eventually recanted. The last plague was that the firstborn male of each Egyptian would be killed if Pharaoh refused to comply. The Jews were instructed to paint the top of their doorframes and each side of the doorframe with lamb’s blood so that the angel of death would know to pass over that house. Quite possibly, Egyptian families would have been spared had they believed God was at work here and marked their own homes. Without realizing it, the Jews were making the sign of a cross in the process, even as some Christians “cross themselves” by touching their forehead and the left and right sides of their chest. Once that horrible night ended, the Jews were quickly expelled from Egypt. Fifty days later those Jews and Gentiles who believed found themselves a great distance from Egypt at the foot of a mountain in the Sinai desert as God the Father gave His law to Moses and the people. Because He loved them, even as we set rules for our children because we love them and do not wish them harm.
Fast forward
Jesus, the Lamb of God was likewise sacrificed on Passover, so that we might be spared from eternal death. Fifty days after Jesus died on the cross, most likely in the year 30 A.D., those Jews and Gentiles who believed, found themselves in Jerusalem as God in the person of the Holy Spirit gave His grace to Peter and the people to coincide with a new covenant. He gave His grace to us because people could not obey the requirements of the law. Yet, God is a forgiving God and His mercy and grace is available to all who desire it. It was available to the Jews and gentiles in Jerusalem on that Pentecost described by Luke and it is available to all today, almost 2,000 years later.
The commentary on the giving of the law at Sinai was developed particularly by Jewish historian and theologian Philo (20 BC – 50 AD) who reported that the sound of the trumpet in the Exodus account “sounded forth like the breadth through a trumpet…” He continued by noting that “the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience” (Decal. 33, 46).
It is not difficult to see a parallel to the phenomena which heralded the giving of the Law from Sinai and what happened in Jerusalem in 30 AD. In the course of time, Jewish traditions embellished these phenomena as reported in Exodus 19:16-25 and Hebrews 12:18). They added particulars such as that at Sinai, “God’s voice, as it was uttered, split up into seventy voices, in seventy languages, so that all the nations should understand …”1 The notion of seventy languages is derived from the number of the seventy children of Israel that came out of Egypt (Exodus 1:1-5 and Deuteronomy 32:8) which is interpreted to represent all the nations of the world.
In his Commentary on the Book of the Acts, F. F. Bruce comments on the tongues as of fire, saying: “When the law was given at Sinai, according to one rabbinic tradition, ‘the ten commandments were promulgated with a single sound, yet it says, “All the people perceived the voices” (Ex 20:18); this shows that when the voice went forth it was divided into seven voices and then went into seventy tongues, and every people received the law in their own language’ (Midrash Tanchuma 26c). So now, on the reputed anniversary of the law-giving, people ‘from every nation under heaven’ heard the praises of God, ‘every man . . . in his own language.’
In the Midrash Rabbi Moshe Weissman explains the rabbinical interpretation of the supernatural phenomena accompanying the giving of the Law, stating: “In [the] occasion of the giving of the Torah, the children of Israel not only heard the Lord’s voice but actually saw the sound waves as they emerged from the Lord’s mouth. They visualized them as a fiery substance. Each commandment that left the Lord’s mouth travelled around the entire Camp and then to each Jew individually, asking him, ‘Do you accept upon yourself this Commandment with all the halochot [Jewish law] pertaining to it?’ Every Jew answered ‘Yes’ after each commandment. Finally, the fiery substance which they saw engraved itself on the tablets.”
Note that Jewish commentaries are not inspired to the extent that Scripture is, and in most cases, contain traditions and explanations. However, these commentaries are often taught in the synagogues, even “back in the day,” so it is likely that at least some people gathered for the event described in Acts chapter 2, saw the similarities between the giving of the Law and the giving of the Spirit that they were witnessing at that very moment.
Then there was the fiery substance. This Jewish embellishment of the giving of the Law, in which God’s voice looked like a “fiery substance” which split into seventy languages, is strikingly similar to Luke’s comparison of the Holy Spirit to tongues like flames of fire alighting for a while on each head. A number of scholars acknowledge the similarity between the manifestation of God’s power at the giving of the Law and at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
This Jewish embellishment of the giving of the Law, in which God’s voice looked like a “fiery substance” which split into seventy languages, is strikingly similar to Luke’s comparison of the Holy Spirit to tongues like flames of fire alighting for a while on each head. A number of scholars acknowledge the similarity between the manifestation of God’s power at the giving of the Law and at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Midrash on Exodus Rabbah 5:9, as cited in Edward Chumney, The Seven Festival of the Messiah (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1994), p. 80.
Perhaps the most vivid description of the analogy between Sinai and the Christian Pentecost is offered to us by Jerome (A. D. 342-420), the famous translator of the Latin version of the Bible known as the Vulgate. He wrote: “There is Sinai, here Sion; there the trembling mountain, here the trembling house; there the flaming mountain, here the flaming tongues; there the noisy thunderings, here the sounds of many tongues; there the clangor of the ramshorn, here the notes of the gospel-trumpet.”
Not everyone sees a close parallel, however. David Jeffrey notes: “The New Testament apostles gathered in Jerusalem were likely conscious of Pentecost as a feast of covenant renewal. And while the events described in Acts 2 invite comparison with rabbinic legends of Sinai, they were also markedly distinct from them. At Sinai one divine voice from the mountain was said to proclaim the Law in seventy languages; in Jerusalem, 120 human voices were inspired to praise God in an unspecified number of languages.”[1]
Jerome, Ad Tabiol 7, cited in The International Bible Encyclopaedia, s. v. “Pentecost,” (Grand Rapids, 1960), vol 4, p. 2319
[1] A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing