This parsha leads us into Moses’ immediate family and then on to his larger (much, much larger) family … the nation of Israel.

Chapter 18 focuses on Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro. (Good thing, too. If it had focused on his mother-in-law, we’d be sitting around telling jokes all day instead of learning from this chapter!) It turns out that Jethro discovers what Moses’ workday is really like. From morning till night, people come to Moses with questions, and Moses gives them God’s answers. To paraphrase Jethro’s response, New York-style: “Whaddya crazy!? Ya gonna kill yourself!” At this point, Jethro teaches Moses the art of delegation and lightening his workload to what we hope ends up being a more reasonable amount.

It’s chapter 19, however, where we move from Moses’ nuclear family to the greater family that all Jews are part of. When you think about it, that’s pretty much the Jewish experience throughout the ages: we are devoted to our immediate family, but our immediate family’s meaning as Jews comes down to the fact that God has constituted us as a nation.

Before Exodus 19, we had been a ragtag band of ex-slaves making our way out of Egypt, kvetching¹ all along the way. However, now comes the formation of that band into a nation, entering a covenant with the God who delivered us from slavery. Some famous words are said on this occasion. First, God tells Israel, “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). And Israel responds: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (verse 8).

This exchange involves more than just words: Mount Sinai is covered in smoke. There is the sound of a trumpet, along with thunder and lightning. What was at first a nice campsite suddenly becomes very foreboding: “All the people in the camp trembled,” according to verse 16. In fact, Scripture says the mountain itself trembled (verse 18), using the same word. It’s as if not only the people, but Mount Sinai itself stood in awe of God. In fact, “when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:18–19). Moses’ comforting but somewhat perplexing answer: “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin” (verse 20).

What can it mean—do not fear, but have the fear of God with you? As we learn from the lives of many people in the pages of the Tanakh, there is a fear that disables and weakens, but there is also a fear that is closer to awe and respect, which conversely enables and strengthens. The paradox in verse 20 is a great conversation starter if you are studying this passage at your local JCC!

Chapter 20 is also the chapter where the famous Ten Commandments are first found—and it’s a whole discussion in itself (these commands will be reiterated a bit differently later in Deuteronomy).

But back to chapter 19 with Mount Sinai, the smoke, lightning, and thunder. It was Moshe Weinfeld (1925–2009), professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who noticed something interesting about the New Testament book of Acts, chapter 2. That chapter takes place on the holiday of Shavuot, called Pentecost in Greek (the language of the New Testament). Jews from around the Mediterranean were gathered there, including Jesus’ own disciples. Then we learn that:

When the day of Pentecost [Shavuot] arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1–4, emphasis added).

Weinfeld makes a connection between this moment and the story in Exodus 19. In both settings, Jewish people heard God’s voice and saw visual phenomena.

“The sound from Heaven and the tongues of fire come from aggadic [legendary] descriptions (dating from the last years of the Second Commonwealth) of the theophany at Horeb [Sinai].”²

Professor Weinfeld also cites Rabbi Akiva’s comments on the Exodus 19 passage: “They saw something fiery coming out of the mouth of the Almighty and hewing on the tablets.”³

And he references first-century Jewish philosopher Philo:

Then from the midst of the fire that streamed from heaven there sounded forth to their utter amazement a voice, for the flame became articulate speech in the language familiar to the audience, and so clearly and distinctly were the words formed by it that they seemed to see rather than hear them. What I say is vouched for by the law in which it is written, “All the people saw the voice.”⁴

Then we have the Targums, those paraphrases of the Bible into Aramaic, with much added commentary and explanation:

When a word had issued from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be His Name, in the form of sparks or thunderbolts or flames like torches of fire … then a flame on the right and a tongue of fire on the left would fly through the air and return and hover over the heads of the Israelites, and then return and incise itself into the tablets.⁵

Acts chapter 2 sounds reminiscent of Mount Sinai, the Exodus 19 narrative, and later midrashic elaborations. In fact, there was a tradition that “each commandment divided into seventy tongues, i.e., into the languages of all the nations”⁶—so, all the nations of the world were said to have heard the Torah in their own language. Acts 2 also recounts that when the disciples spoke, they “began to speak in other tongues” (verse 4).

What we have here is a riff on Exodus 19 and its accompanying midrashim. The subtext seems to be: this is another Mount Sinai; here are new words from God for a new day!

And the apostles proceeded to speak about Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic hopes. As Moses spoke for God, the apostles now speak for his messiah, Jesus.

Chutzpah? Nonsense? Blasphemy—or something else? What do you think?

Endnotes

1 Complaining, Jewish-style.

2 Moshe Weinfeld, “The Uniqueness of the Decalogue and Its Place in Jewish Tradition,” quoted in Ben-Zion Segal and Gershon Levi, eds., The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 1–44, here page 40.

3 Weinfeld, 40.

4 Philo, “On the Decalogue 11,” Sefaria, accessed 2/19/26.

5 Cited in Weinfeld, p. 40, with error “work” instead of “word.”

6 Weinfeld, 41.