Sinai approach; Moses leads to God; fire smoke trumpet typology

it is somehow fitting to go unto a sight of God, the law pedagoguing us unto this, just as indeed Moses also the ones of old; for those things were types of the more true. And the pedagoguing through all-wise Moses, carrying the education through the law unto Christ, was under-typing for the more ancient ones. And besides these things I think it is also somehow worth watching that. For the matter and face of the one needing to pedagogue has been well kept in Moses’ face; for he did not present the people to himself, but to God, somehow as lawgiver and teacher and introducer of the things to be done. And the law also, being a pedagogue through the letter, was bringing us not to itself, but to the God Word having come down from heaven through us. Does the word seem to you to go for us according to the track of the thoughts of the truth?

Palladius: Altogether so.

Cyril: It has been written then that ‘And Moses led the people out unto a meeting of God, from the camp, and they stood under the mountain Sinai. And the mountain Sinai was being smoked wholly because of the Lord’s having come down upon it in fire, and the smoke was going up as smoke of a furnace; and all the people were astonished very much; and the voices of the trumpet were becoming going forward stronger very much. Moses was speaking; and God was answering him with a voice.’ The having come down of God upon a mountain would become a sign also very clear—that he loves to visit understandings not most low-lying, nor indeed to lodge with those having an earthy and ground-cast thought, but with whomever the mind should leap up toward the height, and having as it were a peak rising over, looks somehow below at the human things, and would imagine only the things beside God. And it would also signify otherwise that the knowledge concerning God is high and lying above the things according to us, and somehow perhaps catchable only in part by those having practiced to fly the high things; ‘For young of a vulture fly the high things,’ according as it has been written. And in this understand that God came down defining the ancient law for those of old, not where the people was, but high and far. For he was still standing off far according to the Psalmist’s voice, the Only-begotten not yet having come to be with us fleshly, nor indeed having let himself down unto emptying; for the mystery has been kept not for the more ancient ones, but unto us ourselves; for he has come to be with us as far as one may say, unto a glory clear to eyes, having left behind the heights of the Godhead; and he was living as a citizen with us, as one from us. And God was coming down in a form of fire; it was necessary for those about to be pedagogued by necessity and law to know clearly that they will have words toward fire, if they should choose to be careless. For the God-loving was not being practiced by the more ancient ones from willing love and a free lean of mind, but as from necessity and fear; for a spirit was in them not free, nor indeed of sonship, but of slavery unto fear. And the mountain is smoked because of the Lord’s having come down upon it in fire; and this, I think, is what is hymned in Psalms: