Exodus24chapter 24

Exodus 24:1-2

The summons sets three distances at once. Seventy elders with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu are called up the mountain and told to worship afar off, the people stay below, and Moses alone comes near. Nadab and Abihu are named here among the men who will see God, and named again at Leviticus 10:1-2, where fire goes out from the LORD and kills them for offering strange fire.

Exodus 24:3

Israel gives its consent three times in six chapters, at 19:8 before the law was spoken, here after the words and the judgments are read out, and again at verse 7 with and be obedient added to it. The answer comes with one voice and nothing in the text compels it. Chapter 32 stands forty days on the other side of this sentence.

Exodus 24:4

This is the first occurrence of the word wrote in Scripture, and the first command to write anything came seven chapters earlier at 17:14, over Amalek. Moses writes the covenant here, and at 31:18 the tables are written with the finger of God, which is the phrase Egypt's own magicians reached for at 8:19. The altar stands for one party to the agreement and the twelve pillars for the other, one pillar to a tribe.

Exodus 24:5-6

Young men do the sacrificing because Israel has no priesthood yet, since the order for Aaron and his sons is given at chapter 29 and carried out at Leviticus 8. Burnt offerings and peace offerings are brought, the first given up whole and the second eaten, which is what makes the meal at verse 11 possible. Moses then divides the blood into two equal parts, half into basons and half sprinkled on the altar, so both parties to the covenant are marked with the same blood.

Exodus 24:7-8

he took the book of the covenant: The book is read out loud before the blood touches anybody, so the people agree to terms they have heard in full. Moses sprinkles the reserved half on them and calls it the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words. Hebrews 9:19-20 quotes this scene, and at the last supper Jesus takes the same words for himself, this is my blood of the new testament, at Matthew 26:28.

Exodus 24:9-10

Seventy four men go up, and the text says without hedging that they saw the God of Israel. What it then describes is the pavement under his feet, a paved work of sapphire stone as clear as the body of heaven, and it gives no form and no face. Ezekiel 1:26 sets a throne of sapphire above the firmament in the same terms, and Matthew Henry notes that the Septuagint renders this line as the place where the God of Israel stood.

Exodus 24:11

Here the nobles see God, eat and drink, and are not struck, while at 33:20 the same book says there shall no man see me, and live. Exodus sets the two beside each other and reconciles neither, and 33:11 adds a third, that the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. John 1:18 says no man hath seen God at any time and points to the Son who declared him. Readers who take the appearances of God in the Old Testament as appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ read this verse that way, and others hold that what was shown was a glory rather than an unveiled sight.

Exodus 24:12-13

God calls Moses higher and says the tables carry commandments which I have written, so the writing at verse 4 was Moses' hand and this writing is God's own. Joshua goes up as his minister, and he first appears eight chapters back choosing men to fight Amalek at 17:9. He is still with Moses coming down at 32:17, where he hears the noise in the camp and takes it for the sound of war.

Exodus 24:14

Moses leaves a working court behind him, which is Jethro's arrangement from chapter 18 running for the first time without him. Aaron and Hur are named together because they are the two who held up his hands at Rephidim while Israel fought Amalek, at 17:12. The last instruction he gives before the cloud takes him is that any man with a matter should bring it to Aaron, and Exodus 32:1 opens with the people bringing Aaron a request of a different kind.

Exodus 24:15-16

The cloud covers the mountain for six days and on the seventh God calls Moses out of the middle of it. What Moses receives up there, in chapters 25 to 31, comes in seven speeches, and the seventh of them is the sabbath at 31:12-17. Genesis 1 and 2 put six days of making before a seventh that is blessed and sanctified, and the tabernacle account keeps that count from this verse onward.

Exodus 24:17-18

From the camp the glory looked like fire eating the top of the mountain, and Moses walked into the middle of it. Hebrews 12:18-29 sets this mountain against mount Sion and closes by saying that our God is a consuming fire. He stays forty days and forty nights, a span matched by his second ascent at 34:28, by Elijah at 1 Kings 19:8 and by Jesus in the wilderness at Matthew 4:2, and Deuteronomy 9:9 says he neither ate bread nor drank water.