Exodus 24
Exodus 24 is where the covenant becomes real. For three chapters the LORD has been speaking the law from Sinai - the Ten Commandments, the case laws, the rules for altars and holy days. Now the people stand at the foot of the mountain and hear it all read aloud, and they answer with one voice: All the words which the LORD hath said will we do (v. 3). It is not a burst of enthusiasm; it is a covenant oath, sworn before witnesses, with the full weight of what it means. The chapter opens with a carefully drawn order of nearness - Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders called to worship afar off, while Moses alone is to come near the LORD.3
Then Moses does the thing that will echo through the rest of Scripture. He builds an altar and twelve pillars for the twelve tribes, sends young men to offer burnt offerings and peace offerings, and takes the blood - half dashed against the altar, half held in basons. He reads the book of the covenant in the people's hearing, and when they again answer, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient, he sprinkles the blood on them: Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words (v. 8). The language is so deliberate that when Jesus, on the night of His betrayal, lifts a cup and says, this is my blood of the new testament, He is speaking in the very idiom of this verse.
Finally the scene lifts higher. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders go up and see the God of Israel, with what looks like a pavement of sapphire under His feet - and they are not struck down; they did eat and drink (v. 11). Then Moses leaves even them behind and climbs into the cloud, where the glory of the LORD rests like devouring fire, and he is there forty days and forty nights (v. 18). A people bound to God by blood; leaders welcomed to a meal in His presence; a mediator hidden in the cloud to receive what will shape the nation - the chapter sets out, in order, the things the gospel will one day gather up and fulfil.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to read deeper commentary.
Exodus 24:1-8Behold the Blood of the Covenant
1And 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. 2And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him. 3And 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.
The covenant about to be sealed begins with a summons that is carefully ordered: Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off (v. 1). Notice the structure. There is Moses alone at the head; then three named men beside him - Aaron and his two eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu; then a body of seventy elders representing the nation; and beyond them, the whole congregation at the foot of the mountain. The nearness to God runs in gradations, like rings around a center. This is not arbitrary distance; it is reverence given shape. The God who is about to bind a people to Himself does not collapse the difference between Himself and them. Even in drawing near, there is an order to the approach - an awareness, written into the very choreography, of whose presence this is. (The names of Nadab and Abihu carry a shadow: later they will offer strange fire before the LORD and be consumed, Lev. 10:1-2. For now they are among the privileged few summoned up the mount.)3
The order tightens to a single point: Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him (v. 2). Everyone is called up the mountain; only one is permitted to come near. Moses is the mediator - the one who stands in the gap between the LORD and the people, carrying God's words down to them and their answer back up to Him. The whole chapter turns on this role. The people cannot bear to approach directly; back in chapter 20 they had begged, Speak thou with us… but let not God speak with us, lest we die (Ex. 20:19). So a mediator goes where they cannot. This is one of the deep grooves running through all of Scripture - that fallen people meet a holy God not by storming into His presence on their own, but through one appointed to stand between. Here that one is Moses. The need he answers will not be fully met until another Mediator comes who can bring the people all the way in.
Moses comes down and lays the whole law before the people - all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments - and they respond as one: all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do (v. 3). This is the covenant oath. It is sworn knowingly, after the terms are read, and it is sworn together - with one voice. No one is bound without consenting; no one consents in private. The whole nation, in a single answer, takes the words upon itself. There is something both moving and sobering in it. Moving, because a people freed from slavery freely gives itself to its God. Sobering, because they are promising more than they can possibly perform - as the rest of the story will show, with the golden calf only eight chapters away. The oath is real, and its weight is real. What no oath of theirs can finally secure is the faithfulness of the human heart, and the covenant about to be sealed in blood quietly anticipates that a deeper provision will one day be needed.
4And 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. 5And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. 6And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.
Before the blood is brought, the covenant is put into permanent form: And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill (v. 4). Two things are made to last. First, the words are written - not left to memory or rumour but set down, so that the terms of the covenant are fixed and can be read back. Second, an altar is built, the place where the covenant will be sealed by sacrifice. Moses rose up early; there is an eagerness, a readiness, in the whole scene. A covenant is not a private feeling between God and the soul; it is a public, recorded, witnessed thing, anchored in written words and a built altar. What God has spoken is now down in writing, and what will bind it is now standing in stone. The seriousness of the moment is matched by the permanence of its record.
Beside the altar Moses raises twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel (v. 4). The number is the point. One pillar would not do; there must be twelve, one for each tribe, so that the whole people stands represented in stone at the place of covenant. The altar speaks of God's side of the bond; the twelve pillars speak of the people's. No tribe is left out; none is exempt; none can later say it had no part. And the young men who serve are not yet a formal priesthood - the priesthood will be ordained later - but representatives of the people themselves, who offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD (v. 5). The two kinds of offering belong together at a covenant. The burnt offering goes up wholly to God, the whole animal consumed - total surrender, nothing held back. The peace offering is shared, eaten by the worshippers - communion, fellowship, a meal of reconciliation. Complete gift to God and shared fellowship before Him: the covenant joins them both.
Now comes the act at the heart of the chapter, and it unfolds in two deliberate halves: And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar (v. 6). The blood of the offerings is divided. One half is dashed against the altar - the LORD's side of the covenant. The other half is held back in basons, waiting for the people. The careful splitting is not a detail to read past; it is a picture of what a covenant is. A bond is being made between two parties, and the same blood that seals God's side will seal the people's side. The altar receives its portion first. The basons stand ready. The covenant is being built in stages, like a span thrown across a gap - one end anchored to God in the blood on the altar, the other end about to be anchored to the people in the blood that remains. Everything in the ceremony has been moving toward what Moses will do next with that waiting half.
7And 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. 8And 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.
Between the blood on the altar and the blood on the people, Moses reads: 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 (v. 7). This is the second time the people swear, and now it is sworn over the written word, read aloud in their hearing - in the audience of the people. They are not consenting to something vague; the terms are read out in full, and they answer to those terms. And the answer has deepened. The first time they said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do (v. 3); now they add a word: will we do, and be obedient. The commitment is to action and to ongoing submission - not only to perform the words once but to live under them. The whole transaction is open and public. No one can plead ignorance of the covenant; the book has been read, the oath has been spoken, and the people have bound themselves with full knowledge of what they were taking on.
Exodus 24:9-11They Saw God, and Did Eat and Drink
9Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: 10And 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. 11And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.
With the covenant sealed, the summoned leaders ascend, and the text reports something it states with great restraint and no explanation: Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel (vv. 9-10). The verse says plainly that they saw the God of Israel. It does not describe a face, a form, or features; it offers no account of how they saw, and we should not press it for one. What the text gives us instead is what lay under his feet - and even that it guards with careful, hesitant language. The whole report is hedged with as it were, as though human words can only approach the edge of what was seen. This is not the language of a vision casually had; it is the language of men describing something almost beyond describing. The reverence runs deep: even those granted this astonishing nearness do not presume to set down what cannot be set down. They tell what they can - that they saw the God of Israel - and they leave the rest in the holy reticence the moment demands.3
What the leaders can describe is the pavement beneath His feet: 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 (v. 10). The image is of a floor of brilliant blue stone, clear and luminous as the sky itself on a cloudless day - the body of heaven in his clearness. The same vision will return to a later prophet: when Ezekiel sees the glory of the LORD, he too sees the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone (Ezek. 1:26). The detail does a particular work. By telling us only what is under His feet, the text lifts our eyes upward and then stops them - we are shown the threshold of heaven, the floor of His presence, and no more. It is enough to know that beneath Him is a pavement clear as the heavens, that the place where He stands is filled with a purity past anything earthly. Faced with the God of Israel Himself, the witnesses look down at the sapphire under His feet, and the looking is already almost more than they can bear.
Exodus 24:12-18Forty Days in the Cloud
12And 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. 13And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. 14And 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.
The covenant sealed and the meal ended, Moses is called higher still: 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 (v. 12). Two things stand out. First, the words and be there. It is not enough to come up and quickly return; Moses is summoned to stay, to abide in the presence of God for a long while. Some things God gives cannot be received in a hurry. Second, the law is to be written on tables of stone - not on parchment that fades, not on something a season could destroy, but on stone, by the hand of God Himself: commandments which I have written. The covenant just sworn by the people is now to be set down in the most enduring form there is. And the purpose is not Moses' private possession; it is that thou mayest teach them. What he receives alone on the mountain is for the whole people below. The mediator goes up not to hoard the presence of God but to bring something down from it.
Moses provides for the people he leaves behind: And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. 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 (vv. 13-14). Joshua - the young man who will one day lead Israel into the land - goes up partway with Moses, the next generation accompanying the old. And the elders are told to tarry, to wait, with Aaron and Hur left in charge of any dispute. It is a quiet picture of how covenant community works in the gaps: some are called up, some must hold the place below, and the waiting is itself part of the faithfulness. There is a sober irony here too. Aaron is left to keep order - and it is precisely during this long absence, with the people growing restless waiting, that Aaron will give way and fashion the golden calf (Ex. 32). The instruction to tarry turns out to test them. Waiting on God, when He seems to delay, is one of the hardest things faith is ever asked to do.
15And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. 16And 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. 17And 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. 18And 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.
As Moses climbs, the mountain is veiled: And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. 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 (vv. 15-16). This is the same cloud that led Israel out of Egypt and will later fill the tabernacle when it is finished - the visible sign of God's presence that both reveals and conceals. The glory abode, it settled and stayed; God was not passing by but taking up residence on the mountain. And there is a striking rhythm of six days and then a calling on the seventh - an echo of the days of creation and the Sabbath rest, as though something is being made anew here. Moses waits six days at the edge of the cloud before the voice calls him in on the seventh. Even for the mediator, there is a waiting before the deepest entry. The presence of God is not seized at will; it is entered when He calls.
From the plain below, the people see the glory in a particular form: 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 (v. 17). What is cloud from one angle is fire from another - the same presence that conceals also blazes. The word is exact: devouring fire, fire that consumes. This is the holiness of God seen from a distance: not a tame warmth but a consuming blaze on the summit, awesome and unapproachable. The people stand and watch it while Moses goes in. Later Scripture keeps the image and presses it home - our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29) - and the wonder of the previous scene grows sharper against it: this same fire-crowned God had just let the elders eat and drink in His presence and laid not his hand upon them. The fire on the mountain is real, and so is the table below it. The covenant does not make God less holy; it makes a way for sinful people to live near a holiness that would otherwise consume them.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Exodus 24 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for dam ha-berit (v. 8, “the blood of the covenant”), for the verb behind they saw God (vv. 10-11), and for the imagery of the sapphire pavement under His feet.
- Exodus 24 ↔ Hebrews 9 · Matthew 26 · Zechariah 9Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Exodus 24 to the rest of Scripture - the blood of the covenant (v. 8) quoted directly in Hebrews 9:18-20 and taken up by Jesus at the table (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24), and the covenant meal in God's presence (v. 11) read alongside the promise that the redeemed shall see his face (Rev. 22:4).
- Exodus 24 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Exodus 24 - the ordered nearness of the summons (vv. 1-2), the ratification rite with blood sprinkled on altar and people (vv. 6-8), the difficult report that the elders saw the God of Israel (vv. 10-11), and the six days and forty days of Moses in the cloud (vv. 16-18).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Behold the Blood of the Covenant
- Matthew 26:27-28he took the cup... this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.The Lord at the table speaking almost exactly the words of verse 8 - the blood of the covenant, now His own.
- Hebrews 9:18-20he took the blood of calves and of goats... and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament.Hebrews quotes verse 8 directly - the first covenant dedicated with blood, foreshadowing the new.
- Zechariah 9:11As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.The same phrase as verse 8 - the blood of the covenant, here tied to the LORD’s deliverance of His own.
- Exodus 20:19Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.Why a mediator was needed (vv. 1-2) - the people could not bear to approach God directly.
- 1 Peter 1:2through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.The people sprinkled and bound (v. 8) - the same image carried over to those bound to God in Christ.
They Saw God, and Did Eat and Drink
- John 1:18No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.The wonder of verses 10-11 held open - the unseen God finally made known in the Son.
- Revelation 22:4And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.What the elders received in part (v. 11) held out in full to the redeemed - to see God’s face.
- Luke 22:29-30I appoint unto you a kingdom... that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.The covenant meal of verse 11 carried forward - eating and drinking in the King’s presence.
- Ezekiel 1:26the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone... the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.The same sapphire vision as verse 10 - the glory of the LORD over a pavement of sapphire.
- Exodus 33:20Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.The warning against which the marvel of verses 10-11 stands - that they saw God and yet lived.
Forty Days in the Cloud
- Matthew 4:1-2Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness... when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.The forty days of verse 18 echoed - the One greater than Moses alone with God before His ministry.
- 1 Timothy 2:5For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.Moses the mediator who alone drew near (vv. 2, 18) pointing to the one Mediator.
- Hebrews 12:24to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling.The mediator and the sprinkled blood of this chapter gathered up - a better covenant in His blood.
- Hebrews 12:29For our God is a consuming fire.The devouring fire of verse 17 named - the unchanged holiness of the God who is approached in Christ.
- Exodus 34:28-29he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights... the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.The fruit of the forty days (v. 18) - Moses descends bearing the covenant, his face shining.