The story of Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai is well known, but it is perhaps less understood that he ascended the mountain a total of six times. After the dramatic events of the first Passover the Israelites made their way from the familiar landscape of the Nile Basin into drier and less hospitable terrain of the Sinai Peninsula. Exodus 19 reports that ‘on the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt – on that very day – they came to the Desert of Sinai’ (Exodus 19:1 NIV).

The end of pre-monarchic Israel coincides with the end of the book of Judges and the beginning of 1 Samuel. The ageing prophet had failed to see that the political life of Israel was about to dramatically change and appointed his own two sons Joel and Abijah as his successors, serving at Beersheba. Predictably, they were unfit for the role and ‘did not follow his ways'.