Exodus 19:15
And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day: come not at your wives.
And he said unto the people, be ready against the third day,.... The third day from thence, the sixth of the month Sivan, against which day they were to prepare themselves, by washing their garments, and all other outward acts of sanctification and purity they were directed to, that they might be ready for the service of that day, to hear and receive the law from God himself: Aben Ezra has this note on the passage,
"perhaps not a man slept that night, that he might hear the voice of the Lord in the morning, as was the way or custom of the high priest on the day of atonement;''
that is, not to sleep the night before:
come not at your wives; or, "do not draw nigh to a woman" {q}, to lie with her; meaning not with a strange woman, or one that was not his wife, for that was not lawful at any time; nor with a menstruous woman who was unclean, and so forbidden, but with a man's own wife: what was lawful must now be abstained from, for the greater sanctification and solemnity of the service of this day, see 1 Corinthians 7:5, so Chaeremoh {r} the stoic says of the Egyptian priests, that when the time is at hand that they are to perform some very sacred and solemn service, they spend several days in preparing for it; sometimes two and forty, sometimes more, sometimes less, but never under seven; when they abstain from all animals, and from all kind of herbs and pulse, and especially from venereal conversation with women; and to this latter Juvenal {s} the poet has respect.
{q} hva la wvgt mh proselyhte gunaiki Sept. "to a woman", Ainsworth.
{r} Apud Porphyr, de Abstinentia, l. 4. sect. 7. Vid Clement. Alexand Stromat. l. 1. p. 306.
{s} "Ille petit veniam quoties non abstinet uxor, "Concubitu, sacris observandisque diebus". Juvenal, Satyr 6.