I have an immense skill in avoiding the practical challenges of whatever Bible passage I am studying and getting distracted by incidental apologetic detail. What a wretched man I am! But I think you could be forgiven for falling into that trap when you read about Moses fasting during the long process of receiving the Ten Commandments on Sinai.
Deuteronomy 9 records that Moses stayed on top of Sinai for 40 days and nights and he claims: ‘I neither ate bread nor drank water’ (Deut. 9:9). That reminded me of an article I read about Jesus having to build up to fasting for 40 days and nights. It is such an arduous task to fast for that long that he would have required regular fasting on the build up. You cannot simply decide to fast for 40 days and nights from scratch. Dizziness, headaches and all kinds of mental struggles would kick in early in the process, unless you trained yourself in advance.
Another 40 days
Switching back to Moses, perhaps he was a regular ‘faster’ before he started his Sinai adventure. But then I read that he fasted again, almost right away! After 40 days and nights, he comes down to discover Israel bowing down to a Golden Calf. How could they?!
At that stage of my reading, I should have been challenged about my own unfaithfulness before the Lord. Like Israel I have sometimes sinned outrageously soon after experiencing the power and blessings of the Lord. But rather than focus on that spiritual lesson, I was caught up in the improbability of Moses fasting for another 40 days and nights. That’s 81 days without food and water, a task stretching credulity, even if he grabbed a quick Lucozade in between!
Figurative?
I started asking ‘are these 40 days figurative?’ There is no indication of that in the text, and I was left with the problem that a normal human being cannot last much more than 21 days without water! Maybe you could stretch that if your body was used to rugged wilderness surroundings. But 81 days? What are we to make of that?
As my mind was reeling, I was drawn to the unique setting where this miraculous fast occurred. Sinai was alive with the presence of the Lord, ‘I lay prostrate BEFORE THE LORD as before, 40 days and nights’ (Deut. 9:18). Is the impossibility of fasting for 81 straight days pointing us to a richer reality? Was Moses being (supernaturally) sustained by the intimate presence of Yahweh?
The top of Sinai was, to quote the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘charged with the grandeur of God’. As Moses came down the mountain it was ‘burning with fire’ (v.15). God had made his glory dwell on the mountain, and Moses drank it all in. Regular Israelites weren’t allowed to touch even the foot of the mountain on which God appeared in fire and smoke, but Moses was allowed intimate communion with his Maker.
And when he came down the mountain, his face shone like the sun. Could it be that Moses did not need the food and drink of a normal human being, because the presence of God was so rich that God himself became his food and drink?
We cannot say for sure, but what we can say with certainty is that the presence of God is the most beautiful, most satisfying, most captivating reality in the whole of creation. And if we properly understood it, we would long for the courts of the Lord. ‘As the deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts after you.’ When was the last time you felt like that?
