Smoke darkness tears; fire and clearer gospel voice; Sabbath opens

‘And he set darkness his hiding.’ And the smoke would also signify otherwise for us the tear about to be altogether and entirely upon the despising; for the moisture from eyes creeps out with the strikes of the smoke. And if someone should wish to cast upon the present contemplations otherwise, he will count the fire unto the enlightenment through the law, yet not without mist; for the law is also dim and unclear, and the overshadowing from the letter thick, and able to muddy the eye of the understanding. And the voices of the trumpet going forward stronger; for small was and scarcely sounding the thing of the law in the beginnings. And since the word has gone forward for us unto Gospel education, Emmanuel having shone upon, the voices have become stronger; for Christ has sounded out something audible and clear, and already reaching unto all the inhabited world. For it is possible to hear him saying through David’s voice: ‘Hear these things, all the nations; give ear, all who dwell the inhabited world.’ Although the voice of the law at that time was not going elsewhere, nor indeed initiating all the nations, but sounding around only the Jews’ land, and pedagoguing one race—the one from Israel. But ‘Moses was speaking,’ it says; ‘and God was answering him with a voice.’ For Moses as a servant was seeking the law, and a mediator and under-worker of the divine oracles; yet God was answering with his own voice—that is, through Son; for voice and word of the Father is the Son. And from him is the law, even if it has been spoken through angels; at any rate it is possible, if somehow someone should choose, to hear him saying clearly: ‘I myself who speak am present.’ And, ‘I did not come to loosen the law or the prophets, but to fulfill; for I say to you, until the heaven and the earth pass, one iota or one tip will not pass from the law until all things become. The heaven and the earth will pass, yet my words will not pass.’ Therefore he calls the law his own words; for a voice of God has spoken it, just as I said just now—that is, the Son. Then it says that ‘The Lord has come down upon the mountain Sinai, upon the peak of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses upon the peak of the mountain, and Moses went up. And God said toward Moses saying: Having come down, testify to the people lest they ever draw near toward God to look closely, and a multitude fall from them; and let the priests drawing near to the Lord God be made holy, lest ever the Lord remove from them.’ The God above all comes down unto the mountain, then Moses having been called goes up. For it is not of the possible things that some be strong enough to leap up unto the heights of the true God-seeing, unless God having let himself down and preparing to become approachable to our understandings; and with him calling we go up thus scarcely unto a supernatural and as it were exceptional peak—the true knowledge concerning him which Christ will bring on, uncovering for us the Father and God, and the mountain untrodden for the herd-like (for impassable for the many is the