What Does Exodus 19:21 Mean?

GOD’S WARNING TO THE PEOPLE AGAINST A TOO NEAR APPROACH. (21-25) Warning was given, as soon as God announced His intention of descending upon Sinai, that the people must not approach too near. “Bounds” were set, and the people required to keep within them. Actual contact with the mountain was forbidden under penalty of death (Exodus 19:12). It is evident from Exodus 19:23 that the command to “set bounds” had been obeyed, and a fence erected which it would have required some force to “break through;” nor can there be any doubt that Moses had promulgated the directions, which he had received from God, forbidding any approach to the mount, and threatening death to those who should “touch” it. Yet still it is evident from this concluding paragraph of the chapter (Exodus 19:21-25) that the first warning was insufficient. An intention to “break through, to gaze,” must have been entertained by many. To this intention the existing priesthood, whatever it was, were parties (Exodus 19:22). It always grates upon men’s feelings to be told that they are less holy than others; and we can easily understand that those who had hitherto acted as priests to the nation would resent their exclusion from “holy ground” to which the sons of Amram were about to be admitted. Even of the people there may have been many who participated in the feeling, and thought that Moses and Aaron were “taking too much upon them, seeing that the whole congregation” was holy. Hence, a further very stringent command was requisite, and Moses, having reached the summit, was sent down again from the top to the bottom in order to enjoin upon priests and people alike, in the most solemn possible way, the necessity of their observing the bounds set. (21) **Lest they break through**—*i.e.*, *force their way through the barrier which Moses had erected.* **To gaze, and many of them perish.**—Some might have perished by the execution of the orders given in Exodus 19:13. But the allusion is perhaps rather to such a heaven-sent plague as destroyed the men of Beth-shemesh to the number of 50,070 (1Samuel 6:19).