Bible Strands
Exodus 24:18
Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Moses ascends Mount Sinai after the Israelites witness God's glory as a consuming fire, entering the cloud to remain in direct divine presence.
The words — בְּתוֹךְ הֶעָנָן (be./tokh he./'a.nan) literally means "in the midst of the cloud," describing his physical entry into the opaque manifestation, while וַיְהִי (va/y.hi) denotes his continued state of being on the mountain.
The thread — The forty-day duration recurs in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 9:9, 10:10, where Moses again remains on the mountain to receive the covenant tablets.
Why it lands — The verse records a factual period of isolation and divine encounter rather than offering explicit moral instruction, requiring the reader to confront the weight of prolonged presence in God's immediate glory.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 9:9 When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.
- Exodus 34:28 So Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
- Deuteronomy 10:10 I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, like the first time, and that time the LORD again listened to me and agreed not to destroy you.
- Deuteronomy 9:18 Then I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. I did not eat bread or drink water because of all the sin you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD and provoking Him to anger.
- Deuteronomy 9:25 So I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.
- Exodus 9:29 Moses said to him, “When I have left the city, I will spread out my hands to the LORD. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the LORD’s.
- Exodus 9:33 Then Moses departed from Pharaoh, went out of the city, and spread out his hands to the LORD. The thunder and hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured down on the land.
- Exodus 19:20 The LORD descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the summit. So Moses went up,
- Exodus 24:17 And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop in the eyes of the Israelites.
- 1 Kings 19:8 So he got up and ate and drank. And strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.