Charles Ellicott Commentary Hebrews 12:18

"For ye are not come unto [a mount] that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest," — Hebrews 12:18 (ASV)

The exhortation to faithfulness is most impressively reinforced through a comparison between the earlier revelation and that which is given in Christ.

The mount that might be touched.—It appears certain that the word “mount” has no place in the true Greek text. Had this word been in the sentence as originally written, its absence from all our more ancient authorities would be inexplicable.

While, on the other hand, the contrast with Hebrews 12:22, and the recollection of Deuteronomy 4:11 (from which the last words in this verse are taken), would very naturally lead a transcriber to add this word, which he might suppose to have accidentally dropped out of the text.

If, however, the writer did not use the word here, even though the contrast of Hebrews 12:22 was already in his mind, it seems certain that the word was not in his thought. Therefore, we have no right to introduce it in the explanation of the verse.

The true translation, in all probability, is as follows: For you have not come to a material (literally, a palpable) and kindled fire, and to gloom and darkness and tempest.

The writer's object is to describe the terrors that accompanied the giving of the Law—what the awe-stricken people saw and heard. It was not the mount, but the terrible fire that met their gaze.

Thus, again and again in Deuteronomy, we find references to the voice and the fire alone (Deuteronomy 4:33; Deuteronomy 4:36; Deuteronomy 5:4; Deuteronomy 5:25–26; Deuteronomy 18:16).

Shortly before “the day of the assembly” in Horeb, Israel had been led by a pillar of fire (Exodus 13:21); in Hebrews 12:29 of this chapter, the figure of a consuming fire is applied to God Himself.

To avoid such associations as these, and to vividly represent what was then shown to the Israelites, he speaks of a material and kindled fire.

The metaphor in “palpable,” as applied to fire, is hardly more remarkable than that involved in a darkness which may be felt (Exodus 10:21, where the word used in the Septuagint is almost the same as what we have here).