When Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the Torah records that "Moses entered into the mist, where God was" (Exodus 20:21). The Mekhilta reveals that this approach to the divine presence was not a single step but a journey through three distinct partitions: darkness, cloud, and mist.
The structure followed a specific order. Darkness was the outermost barrier, the first layer Moses encountered as he climbed toward God. Cloud lay within, a second veil separating the ordinary world from the sacred. And mist, the arafel, was the innermost partition, the one closest to the divine presence itself. Only after passing through all three did Moses arrive at the place "where God was."
This three-layered description mirrors the structure of the Tabernacle and later the Temple, which also featured graduated zones of holiness: the outer courtyard, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Just as only the High Priest could enter the innermost chamber and only on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Moses alone could penetrate all three barriers on Sinai.
The Mekhilta's teaching suggests that approaching God is never simple or immediate. Even for Moses, the most intimate human friend of the divine, there were layers to cross, each one darker and more obscuring than the last. Paradoxically, the closer one gets to God, the less one can see. Darkness surrounds the divine presence not because God is hidden in weakness but because God's reality is too intense for human perception. Moses walked forward into increasing obscurity, and it was precisely in the deepest darkness that he found God.