Retelling and expansion
Moses receives revelation on Sinai
Both passages place Moses on the mountain to receive divine instruction. Jubilees supplies a precise date and frames the revelation as an account extending from creation to the sanctuary and the future, setting up the scope of the book that follows.
Read these as distinct passages with their own references. The columns compare a relationship between works; they do not align equivalent verses or highlight translation differences.
Ethiopian collection
R. H. Charles
Jubilees 1:1–5
1 And it came to pass in the first year of the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, in the third month, on the sixteenth day of the month, [2450 Anno Mundi] that God spake to Moses, saying: 'Come up to Me on the Mount, and I will give thee two tables of stone of the law and of the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayst teach them.'
2 And Moses went up into the mount of God, and the glory of the Lord abode on Mount Sinai, and a cloud overshadowed it six days.
3 And He called to Moses on the seventh day out of the midst of the cloud, and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a flaming fire on the top of the mount.
4 And Moses was on the Mount forty days and forty nights, and God taught him the earlier and the later history of the division of all the days of the law and of the testimony.
5 And He said: 'Incline thine heart to every word which I shall speak to thee on this mount, and write them in a book in order that their generations may see how I have not forsaken them for all the evil which they have wrought in transgressing the covenant which I establish between Me and thee for their generations this day on Mount Sinai.
Biblical passage
World English Bible
Exodus 24:12–18
12 Yahweh said to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and stay here, and I will give you the tables of stone with the law and the commands that I have written, that you may teach them."
13 Moses rose up with Joshua, his servant, and Moses went up onto God's Mountain.
14 He said to the elders, "Wait here for us, until we come again to you. Behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever is involved in a dispute can go to them."
15 Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.
16 The glory of Yahweh settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. The seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
17 The appearance of the glory of Yahweh was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel.
18 Moses entered into the midst of the cloud, and went up on the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
Editorial reading aids
Context for the comparison
Read the remainder of Jubilees 1 for its account of Israel's future unfaithfulness and restoration. It establishes a revelatory setting for a retelling, rather than presenting itself merely as a different wording of Exodus.
Questions for close reading
- What is Moses instructed to receive or record?
- How does Jubilees enlarge the time span of the revelation?
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Text sources and editorial treatment
R. H. Charles's English translation as published in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (1913), transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Public-domain translation. Source chapter and verse numbering, including chronological annotations, is retained; editorial chapter summaries are omitted. This is a historic scholarly edition, not an official English translation of the Ethiopian Church.
Charles's Jubilees: full source · About World English Bible and the other Bible editions
Each panel displays the stored source text without rewriting it to resemble the other passage. Verse labels belong to that edition. The observations above describe these selected passages; they are not ancient text or a claim that all scholarly interpretations agree.