2. The punishment of iudiridiials was either judicially inflicted by the hand of man for breaches of positive law, as was, doubtless, ordinarily the case in the historj' of Israel; or it was a s|)ecial providential visitation for an act of disoliedience against (Jod's revealed will, as in the case of the man of (iod who prophesied against ttie altar in liethel; or else it was iiitlicted to mark (iod's abliorrence of all sin, however tritliiig it might seem in man's sight, as in the case of the punishment of Moses.
SIN
767
SINAI
3. On the nature of the far sorer punishment to be infiicted on those who reject the mercy of (iod in Christ Jesus, see Pekdition ; Punishment, Futuke; Ketki-
BUTION.
SIN, Secret. Secret sins are those committed in secret, or those which we, through blindness or preju- dice, do not see the evil of (Psa. xix, 12).
SIN, Unpardonable, seems to consist in the mali- cious ascription of the dispensations, gifts, and influ- ences of the Spirit to the power of Satan. The reason why this sin is never forgiven is not because of any want of sutRciency in the blood of Christ nor in the pardoning mercy of God, but because such as commit it despise and reject the only remedy, i. e. the power of the Holy Spirit, applying the redemption of the Gos- pel to the souls of men. See Meth. Quar. Rev. April, 1858. See Blasphemy; Unpardonable Sin.
SIN, Venial. Venial sins are those which, accord- ing to the theology of the Church of Rome, do not bring spiritual death to the soul, or which do not turn it away from its ultimate end, or which are only slight- ly repugnant to the order of right reason. " It is, more- over, certain," says Dens, " not only from the divine compassion, but from the nature of the thing, that there are venial sins, or such slight ones, as in just men may consist with a state of grace and friendship with God ; implying that there is a certain kind of sin of which a man may be guilty without offending God." Such doctrine as this meets with no countenance from the Word of God, which declares that ■' the wages of sin is death," without making any distinction among sins. — Gardner, f\iiths of the World, s. v. See Venial.
Si'na (Sfiva)), the Greek form (Judith v, 14; Acts vii, 30, 38) of the well-known name which in the Old Test, universally, and as often as not in the Apocrypha and New Test., is given in the A. V. Sinai (q. v.).
Si'iiai (Heb. Sinay', ^^'^'O, perhaps [if Shemitic] thorny, i. e. cleft with ravines; possibly [if Egyptian or Zabian] devoted to Sin, i. e. the moon ; Sept. ^iva [v. r. in Judg. v, 5, SeivS, and in Neh. ix, 13, Su'ai] ; in the New Test. Sii^ci; Josephus, to Yivaiov upog, A7it. li, 12, 1; Vulg. Sinai; A. V. "Sina" [q. v.] in a few pas- sages), a well-known mountain in the peninsula formed by the gulfs of Suez and Akabah. The name appears to be primeval, and its meaning is unknown. It is mentioned thirty-one times in the Pentateuch and only four times in the rest of the Old Test. (Judg. v, 5; Neh. ix, 13; Psa. Ixviii, 8, 17) and four in the New Test. (Acts vii, 30, 38 ; Gal. iv, 24, 25). It would thus appear that the name had, in a great measure, become obsolete at an early period. (In the following account we fol- low, in part, the articles in the Dictionaries of Kitto, Smith, and Fairbairn.)
I. Biblical A'otices and Occurrences. — The leading- statements made regarding Sinai in the Pentateuch de- mand special notice, as they constitute the chief evi- dences in establishing its identity. A small section of the wilderness through which the Israelites passed took its name from the mountain (Exod. xix, 1, 2). In one direction was Rephidim, only a short day's march distant; while Kibroth-hattaavah lay a day's march in another. The '■ desert of Sinai," therefore, could only have been a very few miles across.
In the third month of their journey the Israelites " departed from Rephidim, came into the wilderness of Sinai . . . and camped before the nunuit" (Exod. xix, 1, 2). The base of the mount in front of the camp ap- pears to have been so sharply defined that barriers were put up to prevent any of the people from approaching rashly or inadvertently to "touch the mount" (ver. 12). The "top of the moiuit" was in full view from the camp; so that when the Lord "came down" upon it the thick cloud in which his glory was shrouded was "in sight of all the people" (ver. 11, 10). Wiiile Moses was receiving the law on the summit of Sinai, "the
thunderings and lightnings, and the voice of the trum- pet" were so near the camp that the people, in terror, " removed and stood afar off," yet still remained in sight of the mount, for " the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel" (comp. xx, 18; xxiv, 17). Upon that peak the tables of the law were twice given to Moses, with all the details of the rites and ceremo- nies recorded in the Pentateuch (xxxi, 18; xxxiv). Sinai was thus emphatically "the mount of the Lord" (Numb, x, 33). There the Lord spake with Moses "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exod. xxxiii, 11); and there he revealed himself in such glo- ry and majesty as were never witnessed on earth.