Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Blood of the Covenant
Exodus 24:1-11
1 He said to Moses, “Come up to Yahweh, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship from a distance. · WEB
The agreement is ratified in blood thrown over an altar and over a people, and seventy men eat a meal in the presence of God.
Moses came and told the people all Yahweh's words, and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words which Yahweh has spoken will we do" Exodus 24:3.
The terms are read out and accepted. This is the second time they have agreed Exodus 19:8, and they will agree once more in a moment; the narrative records the unanimity three times, and the reader who knows what happens eight chapters later hears it accumulating.
Moses wrote all Yahweh's words Exodus 24:4. The covenant becomes a document before it is ratified, so that its terms cannot afterward be remembered conveniently. Then an altar at the base of the mountain, and twelve stone pillars, one for each tribe — two parties to an agreement, represented in stone.
Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar Exodus 24:6.
The blood is divided in two. Half goes on the altar, which stands for God; then the book is read aloud and the people assent a third time — we will do all that Yahweh has said, and be obedient Exodus 24:7 — and only then does the second half go on them. Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has made with you concerning all these words Exodus 24:8.
One death, one basin, and both parties marked with it. The ceremony says that the agreement now binds them together and that it has cost a life to make. It is also the sentence Jesus takes up at a table in an upper room, over a cup, with two words changed: this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many Mark 14:24. The correspondence is exact and deliberate, and it means that everything this scene establishes about how a covenant is sealed applies there.
Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up. They saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was like a paved work of sapphire stone, like the skies for clearness Exodus 24:9–10.
Seventy-four men climb a mountain that anyone touching was to be put to death Exodus 19:12, and they see God. The description stops at his feet, and even there it reaches for comparisons — like a paved work, like the skies. Whatever they saw, the account declines to describe it directly.
He didn't lay his hand on the nobles of the children of Israel. They saw God, and ate and drank Exodus 24:11.
The first clause is the astonishment. Nothing happened to them, and the narrator says so because something should have. Then a meal, on a mountain, in the presence of God — the ordinary way of concluding a covenant in that world, and the reason a shared table has meant what it means ever since. The blood came first and made the meal possible, which is the order the whole book follows.
settled What this mark means