Exodus 24 — The Blood of the Covenant
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders go up to worship from afar. Moses writes down all the Lord has said. He builds an altar with twelve pillars. Half the blood is sprinkled on the altar, half on the people. The book of the covenant is read; the people again pledge obedience. The elders see God and eat in His presence. Moses goes up into the cloud for forty days.
“Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.”
— Exodus 24:8
- v.1-3 The call up; the people's second pledge
- v.4-8 The covenant sealed in blood
- v.9-11 The elders see God and eat
- v.12-18 Moses goes up into the cloud for forty days
A covenant in blood. Half the blood on the altar (representing God's side of the covenant); half on the people (representing their side). The dividing of the blood is symbolic of the binding agreement made between the two parties.
Hebrews 9:18-22 expounds this: Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood... without shedding of blood is no remission. The Old Covenant is sealed in blood as the New Covenant will be.
Jesus echoed this verse at the Last Supper — this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28). Christ deliberately invoked Exodus 24 to identify what He was inaugurating.
The blood of bulls and goats could not really cleanse (Hebrews 10:4). It was a temporary ratification, waiting for the better blood of the better covenant.
Seventy-four men saw the God of Israel. This was a partial vision — they did not see Him fully (Exodus 33:20). What they saw was a manifestation, with sapphire pavement under His feet. The image recurs in Ezekiel 1:26 and Revelation 4:6.
The eternal Word who would be made flesh in John 1:14 was the One they glimpsed at Sinai. John 1:18 — no man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son... hath declared him. What they saw was Christ in some manifested form.
God did not strike them dead, though they had seen Him. Did eat and drink — they shared a covenant meal in His presence. The Lord's Supper, instituted millennia later, has roots in this same kind of covenant feast.
For the believer, the table fellowship with God Himself is not a strange new thing. From Exodus 24 onward, eating in God's presence is the picture of restored relationship. Revelation 19:9 names the wedding supper of the Lamb as the destination toward which all this points.
Forty days and nights. The same length as Noah's rain, Elijah's journey to Horeb, Jesus' wilderness fasting. A pattern of significant separation that recurs throughout Scripture.
During these forty days the people would forget him and make the golden calf. The pattern is grimly recurrent — the spiritual leader withdraws to seek God; the people he leads slide into idolatry in his absence. The work of spiritual mediation is more fragile than it looks.
You have promised to obey. You have meant it. You have failed. Israel's confident all the words... will we do is the prayer of every sincere convert. The Old Covenant ended where ours begins — in the realization that we cannot keep the words by our own strength, and we need the blood of the better covenant that is not our doing.
Jesus at the Last Supper deliberately quoted Exodus 24:8 — this is the blood of the new testament. He was declaring the end of the old covenant and the inauguration of the new. The blood Moses sprinkled was animal blood and could only ratify. The blood Jesus poured was divine blood and actually cleanses (1 John 1:7). Every communion service is Exodus 24 fulfilled in the upper room.
The second pledge. The first (19:8) was given before the law was spoken. This one is given after the people have heard the specific commandments. The agreement is now informed — and still impossible to keep.
The chapter is the formal sealing of the Old Covenant. The same people who say all the words... will we do will break them within forty days. The chapter contains the seeds of its own undoing — and the necessity of a better covenant.