Biblical Geography

Mount Sinai

Mountain · Old and New Testament

Scripture first

Exodus 19:18-20 · WEBU

Loading the passage…

Read the whole chapter in the reader

Sinai is wrapped in smoke, and the Lord comes down upon it in fire to speak the .

At Sinai Israel became a nation under : the law given, the people consecrated, the tabernacle commanded, the covenant broken by the calf and renewed by mercy. Israel camped there nearly a year.

Elijah fled back to the same in despair and met God not in wind, earthquake or fire but in the still small voice. Paul later uses Sinai as the standing name of the that condemns, over against the free Jerusalem.

The mountain of the law: the burning bush country, the thunder and the cloud, the covenant, and the golden calf.

Biblical names
Sinai, Horeb, the mountain of God
Later names
Jebel Musa (the traditional mountain)

Identification note. The traditional identification with Jebel Musa in the southern Sinai peninsula is ancient but not provable; other locations, including in north-west Arabia, have been proposed.

of Sinai is granite, gorge and wadi, waterless except where God provides. Israel's dependence there was total: the geography itself taught the lesson of the manna.

  • Mount Sinai is wrapped in smoke, and the Lord comes down upon it in fire to speak the covenant.
  • The burning bush at Horeb, the mountain of God
  • The ten words spoken from the mountain
  • The golden calf while Moses is on the mountain
  • Elijah journeys to Horeb and hears the low whisper
  • Paul reads Sinai as the covenant of slavery, against the Jerusalem above

What we know

Certain

  • Scripture locates Sinai in the wilderness beyond Egypt, a journey's distance from Egypt and from Kadesh, and builds the whole covenant narrative on it.

Probable

  • Jebel Musa has been the traditional site since at least the early Christian centuries, and Saint Catherine's monastery there is among the oldest in the world.

Disputed

  • The exact location of Mount Sinai is debated. Scripture gives distances and descriptions, not a mappable address.