13-01

a mountain called Sinai

Mount Sinai is a mountain that was probably located in the southern part of what is now called the Sinai Peninsula. It was also known as Mount Horeb.

where Moses had seen the burning bush

God spoke to Moses from a bush that was on fire, but did not burn up (See: 09:12).

set up their tents

The Israelites had to travel a great distance from Egypt to the Promised Land. So they took tents with them so that they could set them up as shelters and sleep in them along the way.

13-02

the covenant I am making with you

God was going to make a new covenant with the Israelites (See: 13:04).

my prized possession

The Israelites would belong to God and he would value them more than any other people group.

a kingdom of priests

The Israelites were supposed to teach the other nations about God and be a mediator between God and the nations just as there were priests in the nation of Israel to go between God and the Israelites.

13-03

the people made themselves ready

The Israelites did three days of ceremonial cleansing in preparation to meet with God.

13-04

God made a covenant with the people

This was a new covenant between God and the Israelites. This covenant told the Israelites how they should worship God. This covenant was in addition to the covenant that God made with Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites (See: 04:09).

13-05

the Sabbath day

The Sabbath day was the seventh day of the week. This is Saturday in a modern calendar. God had said that the Sabbath should be holy because that was the day that he finished creating the earth and everything in it (See: 01:16).

a day for you to rest and to remember me

The two reasons for the Sabbath were for people to rest from their work and to think about God and what he had done for them.

13-07

these Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments were main commands that God gave to Moses for the Israelites to obey. They are listed in 13:05 and 13:06.

two stone tablets

The stone tablets were two flat pieces of stone on which God wrote the Ten Commandments.

13-08

the Tent of Meeting

The Tent of Meeting was called by that name because it was the place where God would come to meet with Moses or the high priest of the Israelites.

God would come into the room behind the curtain

God is spirit and is everywhere, all the time. However, he appeared to Moses in a special way in the Tent of Meeting.

the high priest

The term high priest refers to a special priest who was appointed to serve for one year as the leader of all the other Israelite priests.

13-09

disobeyed God’s law

This refers to all of the laws that God gave to the Israelites—not only to the Ten Commandments.

the animal’s blood would cover that person’s sin

The sin of the person would still exist, but the blood would cover it. This is like hiding something that is ugly or dirty by covering it.

God would not see that sin any longer

This does not mean that God was not able to see the person’s sin. Rather, it means that God would choose not to look at the person’s sin. Because that person had offered the sacrifice, God would not punish them for that sin. In this way, they would be clean.

13-12

to wildly worship the idol

The people were sinning by worshiping the idol and also by doing sinful things as they worshiped it.

God was very angry with them

God knew what the people had done and told Moses about it while Moses was still the mountain with God. Moses prayed for the people before he came down from the mountain.

13-13

he smashed the tablets

Moses threw the stone tablets down on the ground and they broke into little pieces. Moses did that to show that the Israelites had broken the Ten Commandments that God had written on the tablets.

13-14

Moses burned the idol and ground it into powder

Moses was so angry that they had made the idol that he ground it into fine particles.

made the people drink the water

Moses made the people drink the water with the particles of the idol in it as a symbol that they were guilty for making that idol.

God sent a plague on the people

God sent ten plagues on the Egyptians to force Pharaoh to set the people free from being slaves in Egypt. But now, the Israelites sinned so terribly that God sent a plague on them to punish them.