Place · Mountain
Mount Sinai
Also known as Horeb, Mount Horeb, Sinai
Named in 20 verses across 6 books, first in Exodus 19:11.
In these stories
In the Bible
The first 10 of 20 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
Exodus
- Exodus 19:11
and be prepared by the third day, for on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
- Exodus 19:18
Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD had descended on it in fire. And the smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.
- Exodus 19:20
The LORD descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the summit. So Moses went up,
- Exodus 19:23
But Moses said to the LORD, “The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, for You solemnly warned us, ‘Put a boundary around the mountain and set it apart as holy.’”
- Exodus 24:16
and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered it, and on the seventh day the LORD called to Moses from within the cloud.
- Exodus 31:18
When the LORD had finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
- Exodus 34:2
Be ready in the morning, and come up on Mount Sinai to present yourself before Me on the mountaintop.
- Exodus 34:4
So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the originals. He rose early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hands, he went up Mount Sinai as the LORD had commanded him.
- Exodus 34:29
And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD.
- Exodus 34:32
And after this all the Israelites came near, and Moses commanded them to do everything that the LORD had told him on Mount Sinai.
Events here
Events the dataset sets at Mount Sinai. Dates follow its Ussher–Jones reckoning (one of several traditional counts), not established history.
- c. 1491 BCTen Commandments Given
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
Of Sin (the moon god), called also Horeb, the name of the mountain district which was reached by the Hebrews in the third month after the Exodus. Here they remained encamped for about a whole year. Their journey from the Red Sea to this encampment, including all the windings of the route, was about 150 miles. The last twenty-two chapters of Exodus, together with the whole of Leviticus and Num. ch. 1-11, contain a record of all the transactions which occurred while they were here. From Rephidim (Ex. 17:8-13) the Israelites journeyed forward through the Wady Solaf and Wady esh-Sheikh into the plain of er-Rahah, “the desert of Sinai,” about 2 miles long and half a mile broad, and encamped there “before the mountain.” The part of the mountain range, a protruding lower bluff, known as the Ras Sasafeh (Sufsafeh), rises almost perpendicularly from this plain, and is in all probability the Sinai of history. Dean Stanley thus describes the scene:, “The plain itself is not broken and uneven and narrowly shut in, like almost all others in the range, but presents a long retiring sweep, within which the people could remove and stand afar off. The cliff, rising like a huge altar in front of the whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of the ‘mount that might be touched,’ and from which the voice of God might be heard far and wide over the plain below.” This was the scene of the giving of the law. From the Ras Sufsafeh the law was proclaimed to the people encamped below in the plain of er-Rahah. During the lengthened period of their encampment here the Israelites passed through a very memorable experience. An immense change passed over them. They are now an organized nation, bound by covenant engagement to serve the Lord their God, their ever-present divine Leader and Protector. At length, in the second month of the second year of the Exodus, they move their camp and march forward according to a prescribed order. After three days they reach the “wilderness of Paran,” the “et-Tih”, i.e., “the desert”, and here they make their first encampment. At this time a spirit of discontent broke out amongst them, and the Lord manifested his displeasure by a fire which fell on the encampment and inflicted injury on them. Moses called the place Taberah (q.v.), Num. 11:1-3. The journey between Sinai and the southern boundary of the Promised Land (about 150 miles) at Kadesh was accomplished in about a year.