CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 12:18. Might be touched.—A figure of speech for a “material” thing. “A palpable and enkindled fire.” For the terrors accompanying the giving of the law on Sinai, see Exodus 19:20.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 12:18-21
Emblems of the Older Revelation.—The rhetorical character of this passage is very marked, and it should be treated as we properly treat rhetorical work. It is unreasonable to press for a precise meaning and a logical relation in the terms of a rhetorical passage. Farrar says: “At the close of his arguments and exhortations the writer condenses the results of his epistle into a climax of magnificent eloquence and force, in which he shows the transcendent beauty and supremacy of the new covenant as compared with the terrors and imperfections of the old.” The point which comes out most prominently is, that the old was an outward and material religion of bodily acts, relations, obediences, and ceremonies. Its character could therefore be indicated by material signs: nature-moods and nature-forces could be wisely associated with the founding of that religion, and the promulgation of that law. Dr. Geikie recalls to mind the sublimity of the great day of Sinai: “At last, on the morning of the third day, the peaks of the mountain were seen veiled in thick clouds, through which lightnings quivered vividly and unintermittently, as if the vast height were aflame; terrible thunders leaped from crag to crag, and reverberated in multiplied echoes, like the sound of mighty trumpets announcing the approach of God. The phenomena of thunder-storms were in all ages associated by the Hebrews, as by other early and simple races, with the Divine presence, and were its fitting accompaniments when Jehovah now actually drew nigh. All nature was moved, and seemed to tremble before Him. The people had been led out by Moses to see a spectacle so august, but its terrors awed small and great; for as they gazed the mountain appeared to smoke like a furnace, and to reel on its foundations. But if the sight presented were august, the words which sounded above the thunders were still more so.… What, in comparison with a moment like this, was the whole record of the Hindoo, Egyptian, or other nations, however ancient—with all their wisdom, or their gigantic creations of temples, pyramids, and colossi? The transaction on Sinai was for all time, and for the life beyond. It laid the foundation of true morality and human dignity among mankind. It was the birth-hour of a people differing from all yet seen. The simple but profound truths of a spiritual God of whom no likeness was to be made—a Being who draws to Himself the oppressed and wretched; of the veneration to be shown to parents; of chastity; of the sacredness of human life and of property; of truth between man and man; and of the necessity of a clear conscience, were first revealed at Sinai, as a legacy for all ages.” Dean Stanley gives us even a deeper impression of the relation in which nature stood to the old revelation: “The outward scene might indeed prepare them for what was to come. They stood in a vast sanctuary, not made with hands—a sanctuary where every outward shape of life, animal or vegetable, such as in Egypt had attracted their wonder and admiration, was withdrawn. Bare and unclothed, the mountains rose around them; their very shapes and colours were such as to carry their thoughts back to the days of primeval creation, ‘from everlasting to everlasting, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made.’ At last the morning broke, and every eye was fixed on the summit of the height (Ras Sufsafeh). Was it any earthly form, was it any distinct shape, that unveiled itself?… There were thunders, there were lightnings, there was the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; but on the mount itself there was a thick cloud—darkness, and clouds, and thick darkness. It was ‘the secret place of thunder.’ On the summit of the mountain, on the skirts of the dark cloud or within it, was Moses himself withdrawn.… They saw not God; and yet they were to believe that He was there. They were to make no sign or likeness of God, and yet they were to believe that He was then and always their one and only Lord.” This sublime scene the writer of the paragraph before us recalls to mind; but it is the materiality of it all on which he dwells. These were nature-emblems of a ceremonial and outward religion.
I. A material mountain.—“A mount that might be touched.” It had substance. It was a real mountain. It has been noticed that those who are born and dwell in mountain districts, though they feel passionately attached to their country, seldom either intellectually or poetically interest themselves in the hills. Those who visit such districts receive the mental and spiritual impressions which they are calculated to produce. And the Israelites were visitors to Sinai, to whom the mountain impressions fully came, giving thoughts of the eternity, stability, and sublimity of Him who made these everlasting hills His throne. How the mountains waken thought may be illustrated by one of R. Buchanan’s Coruisken Sonnets.
“Ghostly and livid, robed with shadow, see!
Each mighty mountain silent on its throne,
From foot to scalp one stretch of livid stone,
Without one gleam of grass or greenery.
Silent they take the immutable decree—
Darkness or sunlight come—they do not stir;
Each bare brow lifted desolately free,
Keeping the silence of a death-chamber.
Silent they watch each other until doom;
They see each other’s phantoms come and go,
Yet stir not. Now the stormy hour brings gloom,
Now all things grow confused and black below,
Specific through the cloudy drift they loom,
And each accepts his individual woe.
Monarch of these is Blaabhein. On his height
The lightning and the snow sleep side by side,
Like snake and lamb; he broodeth in a white
And wintry consecration.”
II. An earthly form.—The awful majesty of tempests in mountain districts is told by travellers. The thunders roll from hill to hill, and gather force as they roll. The might of nature-powers is overwhelmingly impressed on the soul, and man feels his utter nothingness and helplessness in their presence. And yet Elijah learned in this very region of Sinai, that the fire and tempest are but material forces, and belong to the lower ranges of Divine revelation. Those lower, earthly ranges were the only ones which the Israelites could then reach. The time for the spiritual revelations was not then fully come.
III. A trumpet-voice.—Which seems to mean sound without sense. The appeal to fear, rather than to love. A call to attention, an awakening to concern; but the time was not fitted for the utterance of words which could be taken into thought and heart, and made the guide and rule of life. At least the words could not then come from God Himself. His voice sounded to Israel but as the blare of some mighty trumpet, and it did but fill them with fear.
IV. A strict injunction.—They were to consider that mountain so entirely sacred, that they must not permit even a stray beast to overpass the boundaries. The living symbol of that sacredness of the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt, which was the very centre of their religious system. All the emblems suggested a formal, outward, material revelation and religion. And it is of the very essence of outward, material religion—the religion of forms and rites and ceremonies—that it treats men as children, and helps them to goodness through fear. A spiritual revelation and religion—which comes to man and spirit in the power of the Holy Spirit—alone can treat men as men, and help them to goodness by principle and trust and love. The way of “help to goodness through fear” is always called for, since in every age there are found men who are but children, and therefore must be treated as such. Sinai that may be touched, till there can be apprehension of Zion that cannot be touched.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 12:18-19. Sinai and Zion.
I. Christianity is a spiritual, not a material, dispensation.
II. Though it is spiritual in its nature, it employs material forms as adjuncts.
III. Sinai and Zion are only marks of progress, not final destinations.—Jesus is the grand resting-point.
Learn—
(1) that privilege is the measure of responsibility;
(2) that there is no limit to progress in love and knowledge.—Dr. J. Parker.
Hebrews 12:18-21. The Gospel Church and the Jewish Church.—Here the writer goes on to engage the professing Hebrews to perseverance in their Christian course and conflict, and not to relapse into Judaism. He shows how much the gospel Church differs from the Jewish Church, and how much it excels. We have a very particular description of the state of the Church under the Mosaic dispensation.
1. It was a grossly sensible state. Mount Sinai, on which that Church-state was constituted, was a gross, palpable place. It was very much external and earthly.
2. It was a dark dispensation. Upon that mount there were blackness and darkness; and that Church-state was covered with dark shadows and types.
3. It was a dreadful dispensation; the Jews could not bear the terror of it.
4. It was a limited dispensation; all might not approach to that mount, but only Moses and Aaron.
5. It was a very dangerous dispensation. The mount burned with fire, and whatever man or beast touched the mount must be “stoned” or “thrust through with a dart.” This was the state of the Jewish Church, fitted to awe a stubborn and hard-hearted people, to set forth the strict and tremendous justice of God, to wean the people of God from that dispensation, and induce them more readily to embrace the sweet and gentle economy of the gospel Church, and adhere to it.—Matthew Henry.
Hebrews 12:18-24. The Two Mounts.—There, on the right hand, are the flowery slopes of the mount of blessing; there, on the left, the barren, stern, thunder-riven, lightning-splintered pinnacles of the mount of cursing. Every clear note of benediction hath its low minor of imprecation from the other side. Between the two, overhung by the hopes of the one, and frowned upon and dominated by the threatenings of the other, is pitched the little camp of our human life, and the path of our pilgrimage runs in the trough of the valley between. And yet, might I not go a step further, and say that above the parted summits stretches the one overarching blue, uniting them both, and their roots deep down below the surface interlace and twine together?—A. Maclaren, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12
Hebrews 12:18. Mount Sinai.—Among the characteristics of Sinai one must not be omitted—the deep stillness, and consequent reverberation of the human voice. From the highest point of Rás Sufsàfeh to its lower peak, a distance of about sixty feet, the page of a book, distinctly but not loudly read, was perfectly audible; and every remark of the various groups of travellers, descending from the heights of the same point, rose clearly to those immediately above them. It was the belief of the Arabs who conducted Niebuhr, that they could make themselves heard across the gulf of Akaba—a belief, doubtless, exaggerated, yet probably originated or fostered by the great distance to which, in these regions, the voice can actually be carried, and it is, probably, from the same causes that so much attention has been excited by the mysterious noises which have, from time to time, been heard on the summit of Gebel Mousa, in the neighbourhood of Um-Shómer, and the mountains of Nâkús, or the Bell, so called from the legend that the sounds proceed from the bells of the convent enclosed within the mount. In this last instance the sound is supposed to originate in the rush of sand down the mountain-side, and here, as elsewhere, playing the same part as the waters or snows of the North. In the case of Gebel Mousa, where it is said that the monks had originally settled on the highest peak, but were, by these strange noises, driven down to their present seat in the valley, and in the case of Um-Shómer, where it was described to Burckhardt as like the sound of artillery, the precise cause has never been ascertained. But in all these instances the effect must have been heightened by the death-like silence of the region, where the fall of waters, even the trickling of brooks, is unknown.—Dean Stanley.
Roots Uncomely but Useful.—The root of a plant is often a rough and very unsightly part. Its colour is unpleasing, and its form ungainly, yet it plays an all-important part in the economy of the plant’s life. You may pluck off the bright flowers and leaves one by one till all is stripped bare, and it will still survive; but the root is essential to its life: injure or remove it, and the plant perishes. Again, the oxygen, the life-sustaining element of the air, given off by the various members of the vegetable kingdom, comes entirely from the stem and leaves, the green parts of the plant, the more beautiful flowers and fruit only exhaling poisonous carbon. So it is with the body mystical of Christ, “the Church of the firstborn,” and its members in particular.… Often God brings a rough, uncouth Luther to far more distinction than a refined Erasmus, and exalts Bunyan the tinker above the most polished of his pious contemporaries. The “uncomely parts” have more honour, for it is God’s method of working to place more honour upon them, and make them of more use. It is very humbling to pride, especially spiritual pride, but it is His way, who will have “no flesh to glory before Him.”—James Neil, M.A.