OT Notes Ex. 24:12-18

This passage deserves a  closer look than it often receives.
Janzen has some interesting things to say about it in his little commentary on Exodus (189-190).In the first section we have a communal covenant ceremony. Now it goes farther up the mountain and further into the divine presence.This is an entry way into constructing a tabernacle, a dwelling/tenting place of the presence of God with the people.This is a more democratic religious move as God travels with the people and provides access at times for more direct communication and presence, as in chapter 40.

Torah is law but also teaching. The root has a sense of being thrown, or shooting an arrow, so it can acquire a sense of direction, of pointing something out.

We get a reprise of creation, as moses waits on high for six days and on the sabbath day is called into the full presence. I cannot tell if Joshua remains a bit behind or continues to accompany Moses.How do you repsond to only Moses, apparently, being in the presence with Joshua down a bit, then Aaron and Hur then the elders, then the people.What are your thoughts on such a seeming hierarchy?

Moses is there for the same period of time as the "rain" of the flood and Jesus in his temptation.Why was this forty day period such a staple? the golden calf episode is a reaction to the time period.

The appearance of a consuming/devouring fire continues here.Why is this a picture of the divine glory and its danger to mortals, do you think? It certainly alerts us to the dangers of the domesticated buddy we have made as deity in our time.

James Kay did a fine sermon using different cloud images in Scripture and in our time. Work with some care with the image of a cloud, as in the cloud by day and how a cloud obscures but allows us to be shielded from the rays of direct sunlight.One could go a mystical direction here a sin a cloud of unkowing.

Why do you think Moses had to wait a week? Does it relate to the creation of Israel as a people? Does the sabbath refer to DT.'s view of the sabbath as against slavery and the need for rest? Why did it take forty days to then receive the tablets and the instructions on the tabernacle?