Q: Both Exodus 24:18 and 34:28 state that Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mt Sinai. That’s an awful long time to be on top of a mountain in the middle of the desert. To be honest, it’s kinda hard to believe that Moses would do it even once, let alone twice. So I’m wondering…are these two separate occasions (as they appear to be) or just one occasion stated two different times?
Great question! I love this question because it shows how observant you are as a reader. Good ol’ Moe does appear to be quite the mountain-schlepper! But you raise a good point. Is it believable that Moses would have stayed on Mt Sinai for over a month on two different occasions? The text certainly appears to say so, as you rightly point out. But, as you also rightly point out, maybe the text is repeating itself for some unknown reason, describing the same trip twice. In order to answer the question, we need to do first things first. So let’s count. How many times does the text say that Moses hauled himself up and down Mt Sinai?
The Israelites arrive at the Desert of Sinai at the beginning of Exodus 19. Moses is described as “going up” in 19:3 and then “coming down” in 19:14. [That’s 1x.] Moses “goes up” again in 19:20 and “comes down” in 19:25. [That’s 2x.] Later on, Moses again “goes up” in 24:9, at first taking along Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and 70 elders. Apparently they go only partway up, just enough to “see God” (whatever that means in context). God then calls Moses to come up further, and he takes Joshua along with him. Apparently he is on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights (24:18) and comes down along with Joshua in 33:15. But it’s a definite pairing of Moses “going up” in 24:13 and then “coming down” in 33:15. [So that’s 3x.] And finally, we have yet another verbal pairing of Moses “going up” in 34:4 and then “coming down” in 34:29, and again he is described as being on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights (34:28). [That’s 4x.] So if we take the narrative at face value, Moses appears to ascend and descend Mt Sinai four separate times.
I myself see no reason to read chapter 19 as anything other than its plain sense. Moses appears to ascend and descend Mt Sinai (either in whole or in part) twice during the three-day period immediately before God speaks the 10 commandments from the summit of the mountain. The big debate here is whether Moses took an “extended-stay” trip up the mountain on two different occasions, or whether the text is describing one-and-the-same trip two different times. And here is where roads diverge in terms of how to explain the text, including the possibility of multiple source documents/traditions that were combined somehow to form the text of Exodus that we have today. But let’s work with a single author theory for the moment.
So if we assume that the book of Exodus is written by a single author telling a single story, then the question we have to ask is whether the author is describing two different trips up the mountain, or whether the author is describing the same trip two different times. It is possible that a single author might be describing the same trip two different times, but it seems highly unlikely, for a couple different reasons. First of all, the second time Moses is specifically instructed to bring up two tablets of stone to replace the ones that he broke earlier, after having come down from the mountain the first time. The narrative doesn’t really make sense if a single author is retelling in chapter 34 the same trip as described in chapters 24-33. Secondly, there appears to be a narrative thru-line that fits perfectly with twin trips up the mountain. The first time God gives the 10 commandments, they come directly from God himself, first as spoken by the voice of God (20:1-17) and then written by the finger of God (31:18) as received by Moses on his first long trip up the mountain. Then, the second time God gives the 10 commandments, they do not come directly from God but are written/transcribed by Moses on his second long trip up the mountain. Moses takes the replacement stone tablets up the mountain with him, and while on the mountain he writes the 10 commandments on the tablets and then brings them back down with him. [This fits with the more general pattern of the Torah as well. The 10 commandments appear twice in Torah: the first time as spoken by God in Exodus 20, and the second time as spoken by Moses in Deuteronomy 5.] The story cogently coheres together as Moses making two separate trips up the mountain. The story does not cogently cohere as Moses making a single trip up the mountain that is being described twice. So if we assume a single author of Exodus, then I side with the view that Moses makes two long excursions on Mt Sinai.
However, it has been suggested that the book of Exodus contains two separate accounts of Moses going up Mt Sinai that have been compiled together. If this is the case, then perhaps Moses in real life actually made only one “extended-stay” trip up Mt Sinai, and what we are reading in Exodus is two differing accounts of one event––that is, a longer version (the first one) and a shorter version (the second one). If this is the case, then the person who composed Exodus would not really be an “author” but rather a “redactor” who is working with at least two different source documents/traditions that both included a story of Moses going up the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. And the redactor wove both of these documents/traditions into the book of Exodus that we are reading now. I think this is a perfectly plausible theory––and who knows? maybe one day we’ll find one of those source documents!––but until then, it’s really nothing more than a theory. And there might be any number of other plausible explanations for the textual evidence that we just haven’t thought of. The point is, I don’t think there’s a substantive reason to assume that the two stories of Moses going up the mountain for 40 days are from two different sources.
Of course, these two options are not mutually exclusive. Both might be true! It’s possible that there are two different source traditions describing two different events. Perhaps Moses really did make two different “extended stay” trips up Mt Sinai, and that one source described the first trip, while a second source described the second trip. But again, this is really just speculation, and I think by now we’re venturing very far afield from what is actually helpful for understanding the text that we have in front of us. I don’t think we need to keep going down this path.
Therefore, I think the best explanation of the available text is that the book of Exodus intends to communicate that Moses made two different trips up the mountain that lasted 40 days. Some scholars don’t find that believable, but I see no compelling reason to doubt it. Maybe there are multiple source traditions at play, and maybe there aren’t. I can’t determine that from the textual evidence, and I’m content to say that I don’t know.
Reading the Old Testament 