[Exodus 24] A Vision of Greater Glories. In this chapter, God meets with Moses and calls the elders of the people to sit with Him at a Covenantal table and behold His glory. The law is given, and the tablets are prepared as the people look on in silent witness.
[Exo 24:1-18 KJV] 1 And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. 2 And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him. 3 And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do. 4 And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. 6 And Moses took half of the blood, and put [it] in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient. 8 And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled [it] on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words. 9 Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: 10 And they saw the God of Israel: and [there was] under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in [his] clearness. 11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink. 12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. 13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. 14 And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur [are] with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them. 15 And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. 16 And the glory of the LORD abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. 17 And the sight of the glory of the LORD [was] like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. 18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
In verse 1 of our chapter Moses is called up before the Lord with the seventy elders of Israel and Aaron. If you pay attention to the language, you will see that the call to come up that Moses is given is in the third person. That suggests to us that it is not the Lord saying “come up before Me…” but someone else relaying God’s command for Moses and the elders to approach unto Him. Who might this be? The wording here did not escape the Hebrew scholars of the Middle Ages. They suggest that it was Michael the archangel. Others make reference to the Trinity in expostulating that it was the Pre-existent Word of God who would become flesh and dwell among us in due time. These are mysteries that are alluded to in scripture that we may peer into without full understanding. In Gen. 1:26, the verse says, “Let us make man…” Who is the “us” that is speaking? The wording refers to “Elohim,” which is the plural form of the singular “El.” They suggest that the plural form is not used to denote a literal number more than one because the scripture says, “the Lord our God is one Lord…” (Deu. 6:4), but rather the plural in their view, was used as an emphasis on God’s greatness. Regardless we know from scripture, there is reference to God as a Father, God as a son, and God as the Holy Spirit. How we are to frame that in our thinking has been cause for conjecture and contention for thousands of years. One writer complained about the mystery of the Trinity by saying, “If I try to understand it – I go crazy! If I deny it – I go to hell!” Whatever be the case, we can only agree with the apostle Paul in his first letter to Timothy:
[1Ti 3:16 KJV] 16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.
What is the occasion of Moses and the Elders going up before God? It was that the Elders with Aaron and his sons might witness Moses going up higher to receive the words of God (apparently the words conveyed in the previous two chapters) and to return to rehearse them before all the people, which upon hearing the people swear that they will keep the judgments of the Lord.
Upon receiving the people’s solemn vow to keep the words of the Lord, Moses writes everything down that he has communicated to them orally (v. 4) and retires for the evening. Then the next morning, Moses gets up very early and, in the sight of all the people, builds an altar at the base of Sinai with twelve pillars, one for every tribe in Israel. The pillars were probably made of marble, of which there was abundant supply near and around Mt. Sinai. An offering is then made, such as the type of offerings that were commonly made when a blood covenant was observed. What is essential to know is that this offering of shed blood at the base of the mountain is as important as what happened at the summit of the mountain where the law was handed down by God to Moses before the Elders and Aaron and his sons. This entire scene is what made the Old Covenant a Covenant because without blood in ancient times, a covenant was without force until the animal blood was shed. The altar was significant then in this entire process.
In v. 7, Moses takes what he had written the day before and reads it, thereby conveying the words to the people again. The people again say, “all that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient…” Moses then took of the blood from the sacrifice and sprinkled it upon the people.
How does this relate to us as believers? This very act is what the writer of Hebrews speaks of in Hebrews 12:
[Heb 12:18, 22, 24-25 KJV] 18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, … 22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, … 24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than [that of] Abel.
The Hebrews came to the sprinkling of animal blood and placed themselves under oath to obey all that God commanded through Moses. Just as surely as they made a covenant with God at the base of the Sinai we make a covenant with God at the foot of the Cross to keep His words and to honor His Lordship in our lives as the writer of Hebrews likewise commands us as Moses commanded the people:
Heb. 12:25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more [shall not] we [escape], if we turn away from him that [speaketh] from heaven:
The people in this chapter not only bind themselves to the blessing for their obedience, but they bind themselves by the words of their mouth to the consequences of disobedience, such consequences that are upon them still thousands of years later. Words mean something. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior there are consequences that come to bear on our lives that unfortunately our leaders do not often make clear or remind us of which the writer of Hebrews makes reference to as well:
[Heb 10:31 KJV] 31 [It is] a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
What happens next in our chapter? The Lord calls Moses, Aaron, and the Elders before Him to a table whereon they will eat and drink with God Himself. Why will they do this? Because in ancient cultures, covenants were ratified and sealed with a meal. Thus we peer dimly through the ages at a scene that beggars the imagination (v. 10):
[Exodus 24:10 KJV] 10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.
Verse 11 describes this as the nobles of the children of Israel, seeing God and eating and drinking in His presence. Then in v. 12, God calls Moses up to the mountain again to receive another writing of the law, this time with the finger of God written on stone tablets. Thus, in our chapter, Moses has rehearsed the law orally to the people, then Moses himself wrote everything down (probably on animal skins), and now the words will be written a second time in stone after the people swear to adhere to all that God has said. What does this tell us? Until the people agreed and submitted to all that God said there existed only the potential of a transitive Covenant. Now, however, that they have sworn to obey and executed a covenant between them the words are now not recorded as a transient thing by oral tradition or on animal skins but upon indelible stone by the very finger of God. That tells us that there is something of the permanence of God’s blessing that does not accrue to our lives until our obedience is fulfilled. The blessing is ours by promise, but until we ratify with our commitment, the surety of the promise is not yet our guaranteed portion.
When Moses goes up to the mountain this time, he takes Joshua with him, and Joshua is instructed to wait for Moses to return from the summit with the tablets of God. Moses goes further up, and a cloud receives him out of Aaron’s sight. The glory of the Lord then rests upon Sinai with the cloud covering the sight from the peoples’ view for six days, and then Moses comes out of the midst of the cloud (v. 16). God ever desires for a man or a woman to come up to Him away from the crowd and into the cloud of His glory.
Verse 17 tells us that the sight of God’s glory was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain. Moses makes himself visible here after six days, and then without a word turns and goes back into the cloud in the sight of the people not to be seen again for forty days. Why did he do this? We know he was there for forty days, but few study this passage closely enough to realize what happened before this and that Moses was actually away from the people for 47 days in all – only appearing once briefly to show himself on the seventh day without any explanation given as to why he did so. All we know is that for all the supernatural things we have witnessed here and the glory we have seen, it is all to be concluded as a lesser covenant for the greater covenant of greater things we have in Christ.
