“Now the Lord said to Moses, “Cut out for yourself two stone tablets like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered. “So be ready by morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain” (Ex 34:1-2. “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a COVENANT with you and with Israel.” The Lord considered the Ten Commandments a memoralization of the covenant He had made with the people.
The two key-words in the Bible for covenant or alliance are Heb. berîṯ and Gk. diathēkē. berîṯ, usually refers to the act or rite of the making of a covenant and also to the standing contract between two partners. diathēkē is the Gk. translation (lxx) of the word berîṯ which is taken over in the NT. Its meaning is ‘testament’ (New Bible dictionary (3rd ed.) 234). In the case of the Sinai Covenants from the standpoint of God they could rightly be called “promises”. In this case the covenants were very one-sided in that God promised many things while he only required the Israelites to do a few things—love Him and obey His commandments. Hebrews says this of God’s covenants: “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you” [Gen 22:7] And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us” (Heb 6:13-18). God swore allegiance to the Covenant by Himself since there was no one greater to swear by.
An oath is a statement by which people give assurance that they have spoken the truth or by which they obligate themselves to perform certain actions. God is usually invoked as guarantor of the oath, with the expectation that a broken or false oath will be punished. Oaths thus are a holy ritual and to swear falsely is to profane God’s name (Exod. 20:7; Lev. 19:12). Swearing by God’s name was most solemn (Matt. 26:63) (Harpers Bible Dictionary, p. 716). When men swore by an oath it an oath before God and a failure to perform the oath is considered a sin against God. The Hebrew word for ‘oath’ comes from the number seven, the sacred and magical number in Hebrew culture. In Genesis 21 seven lambs are used as witnesses to a covenant. Oaths and curses (a related type of statement) are often indicated in the Bible by abbreviated formulae, such as ‘May the Lord do thus and so if… Such oaths were mostly negated in the New Testament under the New Covenant of Christ since with the forgiveness of sin there was no punishment for violating an oath.
The Old Covenant in the Old Testament differs from the New Covenant of Christ since the only requirement to be righteous under the New was faith in Jesus Christ. It was not so different that the Abrahmiac covenant in that Abraham also was made righteous by his faith alone. In Christ, that covenant to Abraham remains in effect as righteousness is obtained by faith in Christ. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, And I will write them on their hearts. And I will be their God, And they shall be My people” (Heb 8:10). Human effort was no longer required as righteousness was obtained through faith and grace. In Christ faith and grace produced an actual transference of Christ’s nature to the believer making the believer incapable of sin, as Christ was. As Christ said: ““Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke [jot or tittle, KJV] shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18). This was not just for Christ but for all who believe. Christ was able to fulfill the Law because it was in His nature to do so—a quality we too can obtain by faith.
“When Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him. So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers in the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them. Afterward all the sons of Israel came near, and he commanded them to do everything that the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded, the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Him” (Ex 34:29-35). But the glory that shone on Moses face was no comparison to the glory to be revealed in Christ. “But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?” (2 Corinthians 3:7-8). Paul used the term “ministry of death” because the Law was death for everyone who did not fulfill it completely. Israel never fulfilled the Law.
The remainder of Exodus covers parts of the Law that Israel was to obey in the wilderness. We will come back to Exodus when we are discussing the Law specifically. Otherwise we will go to the Book of Numbers to complete Israel’s progression in their wilderness march.
The Israelites Continue Their Journey –Book of Numbers
Judaism was nothing more than anything a family. There were 12 tribes, the offspring of Jacob’s (Israel’s) family who were divided into 12 camps according to the names of the 12 sons of Jacob (Iseael) who were: Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Reuben, Simeon, Gad, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Naphtali and Levi. The final tribe was composed of the sons of Joseph: Ephraim and Manasseh called half-tribes since the one portion that would have belonged to Joseph was divided between his sons. “The Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “The sons of Israel shall camp, each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ households; they shall camp around the tent of meeting at a distance [facing it] (Num 2:1-2). Moses took a census of all the people in the 12 tribes (Num 2:32). “The Levites, however, were not numbered among the sons of Israel, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Thus the sons of Israel did; according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so they camped by their standards, and so they set out, every one by his family according to his father’s household” (Num 2:33-34).
The Levites were given no land as they were to be the Priests to the Lord