On Mount Sinai and Mount Zion

Contents

1. 1The writer asks whether Sinai, where the law was given, and Zion, from which Isaiah says the law goes forth, are the same mountain, and proposes to answer from the meaning of their names.
2. 2From the meanings of their names and from Psalm 2, the writer argues that Zion is a heavenly, holy mountain and Sinai an earthly one.
3. 3Sinai is earthly and stands for the carnal people who received the law on stone tablets, while Rebecca's twins prefigure the division between the believing Gentiles and the unbelieving Jews; biblical names foretell their bearers' destiny.
4. 4The name Adam is spelled from the Greek names of the four quarters of the world, and its numerical value, 46, points to Christ's passion and to the temple of his body.
5. 5The names of Abel, Enoch, Job, and Abraham foretold their destinies, including Enoch's return to confront the Antichrist.
6. 6Sinai means “eternal temptation and hatred” because the people tested by the law there failed and fell into God's hatred, as the story of Esau and Jacob prefigures.
7. 7Zion's meaning, “temptation of provocation and watching,” points to the cross: Christ was tested by his enemies and watched from the cross over the two robbers, figures of the Jews and the Gentiles.
8. 8At the crucifixion some wept and others mocked, until the signs in heaven and earth turned the feast into mourning, fulfilling Amos.
9. 9Mount Zion is the cross, Christ's royal throne: Pilate's title proclaimed him king, Psalm 24's innocent one ascends it, and from his pierced side the law of Christians and the church came forth.
10. 10The Jerusalem from which the word goes forth is the heavenly city of Revelation, which is the church.
11. 11The two mountains stand for the two testaments and the two peoples: the earthly Jews who received the land, and the heavenly Christians who will receive the kingdom.
12. 12The writer introduces a comparison from everyday life to explain Zion as the cross from which Christ watches.
13. 13Christ is the spotless mirror of the Father, as Wisdom says, and believers see Christ in themselves as in a mirror; he is also the true vine.
14. 14Believers are the true vine in the Lord's vineyard, and Christ its keeper, like the boy in a lookout on a pole who drives thieves away from a vineyard at vintage.
15. 15Christ on the cross is the keeper who guards the church, his vineyard, and drives off the devil, as Isaiah's servant who brings judgment to the nations.