Covenant Ceremony
The Covenant Ceremony
Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay
Accepting the Covenant
Then Yahweh told Moses, “You, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders must climb up to Yahweh and bow down at a distance. But only Moses may approach Yahweh. The others must not approach, and the people must not climb up.”
Moses went and told the people all Yahweh’s words and judgments. The people all answered together, “All the words Yahweh said, we’ll do.” Moses wrote down all Yahweh’s words.
Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay
After receiving the covenant stipulations, Moses needed to climb down the mountain to report to the people. The covenant wouldn’t take effect until they agreed to Yahweh’s conditions. But before Moses left, Yahweh commanded him to bring Israel’s leadership up with him the next time he came. Moses’s brother, Aaron, and Aaron’s eldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, represented the future priesthood.1 The seventy elders, the same number as Jacob’s household when they moved to Egypt, likely represented the nation as a whole.2
Accepting the covenant would start to remove the barrier separating Israel, and ultimately all of humanity, from Yahweh’s presence. Because of this, Yahweh gave these leaders special permission to climb partway up the mountain afterward. But only Moses could approach the summit, and the rest of the people still couldn’t touch it at all.3
Moses returned to the camp and told the people everything Yahweh had said and all about the covenant stipulations. The people had agreed to obey when Yahweh first proposed a covenant.4 But now that they had the full terms, their words carried more weight. Still, verbal acceptance wouldn’t suffice in their culture. So Moses wrote down the covenant stipulation in preparation for the covenant ceremony the next day.
The Blood of the Covenant
The next morning, [Moses] rose early, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and set up twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young Israelite men to sacrifice bulls as burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to Yahweh. Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins. The other half, he sprinkled on the altar.
Then, taking the covenantal scroll, he read it to the people. They responded, “We’ll do everything Yahweh said. We’ll obey.”
So Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people. “This is the blood of the covenant Yahweh has made with you based on all these words.”
Early in the morning, Moses made the rest of the preparations for the covenant ceremony. He built an altar according to Yahweh’s instruction in Exodus 20:24–26.5 He also set up twelve rock pillars near it, representing Israel’s tribes. The young men who offered the bulls were probably the firstborn, devoted to serving Yahweh until they were later replaced by the Levites6
As the young men sacrificed the bulls, Moses gathered the blood and put half into basins. He sprinkled the other half on the altar to purify it for service to Yahweh.7 They could then burn the bulls on the altar, completely burning the burnt offerings. But they burned only portions of the fellowship offerings, while leaving the rest for the covenantal meal.
After making the necessary sacrifices, Moses read the covenant stipulations he had written on a scroll the night before8 For the second time, the people heard Yahweh’s terms, and for the second time, they accepted them. So Moses sprinkled the blood from the basins over the people, purifying them to serve Yahweh. They had now confirmed the covenant and were bound to obey him based not just on his saving acts in Egypt but also on their own oath.
As this sacrifice initiated the covenant at Sinai, so sacrifices initiate the other three major covenants.9 When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, he gave the disciples the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood of the covenant.”10 This deliberate echo of Moses’s words to the Israelites points to the purpose of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. It initiated a new covenant, and it purified a people to serve Yahweh. But Jesus did what Moses couldn’t. He gave his blood for the people, a better sacrifice that initiated a better covenant.11
The Covenantal Meal
Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel climbed up. They saw the God of Israel! The area under his feet looked like it was paved with lapis lazuli and was as pure as the sky. Yet he didn’t lift a hand against the leaders of the Israelites. They saw God, and they ate and drank.
With the covenant ratified, the traditional covenantal meal began.12 Though the text doesn’t record the participation of the people, they likely ate near the altar. But as Yahweh had commanded, Moses brought the Israelite leaders partway up Mount Sinai. They were assigned the best seats at the feast and given the privilege to commune directly with God.
While the leaders ate and drank, they could see Yahweh at the summit above them. They didn’t see his full glory, which no one can survive seeing.13 But they entered the storm cloud covering the mountain and saw their God within it.14 Yet, as always, Scripture gives no visual description of Yahweh. Instead, it focuses on the area beneath his feet, pure and bright blue as if paved with lapis lazuli. Certainly not what they expected in the middle of a storm!
Normally, approaching the mountain and trying to see God resulted in death.15 But God didn’t harm the Israelite leaders. He intended to draw gradually closer to his people, revealing his presence and restoring the relationship sin had broken.16 The covenant was merely the first step.
Yahweh’s Glory
Yahweh told Moses, “Climb up to me on the mountain. Wait there, and I’ll give you the stone tablets, my teachings and commands that I’ve written down to teach them.”
So Moses got up, along with Joshua, his assistant, to climb up God’s mountain. He told the elders, “Stay here until we return to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, so anyone with a problem should go to them.”
Moses climbed up, but the cloud covered the mountain. Yahweh’s glory settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day, he called out to Moses from the midst of the cloud. To the Israelites, Yahweh’s glory looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. And Moses entered the cloud and climbed up the mountain. He stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
Image by Sweet Publishing from Free Bible Images, CC BY-SA 4.0
After the covenantal meal, Yahweh called Moses to climb up to the summit of Mount Sinai. Moses’s assistant, Joshua, climbed up partway with him, but the other leaders of Israel had to wait at the bottom. The context suggests Moses wanted them to return to the camp, not wait where they had eaten in Yahweh’s presence. That way Aaron and Hur, who was probably one of the elders, could resolve disputes among the people in Moses’s absence.
Moses tried to obey, but as he approached the top, Yahweh’s glory entered the cloud covering the mountain and settled on the summit. The appearance of Yahweh’s glory to the Israelites represented Yahweh drawing even closer to his people. To them, it looked like a consuming fire, representing God’s holiness that destroys all unrighteousness. Because of sin, even Moses couldn’t approach God in that state.
For Moses’s safety, the cloud blocked him from completing his climb. But instead of turning back in disobedience, he waited six days until obedience became possible. On the seventh day, Yahweh gave him permission to enter the cloud. Presumably, the appearance of Yahweh’s glory diminished so Moses could once again meet with God face-to-face.
- Exodus 28:1.
- Genesis 46:27.
- Exodus 19:12.
- See Purification.
- See Proper Worship.
- See The Firstborn Devoted.
- Exodus 29:21, 30:10; Leviticus 8:15, 17:11.
- This is traditionally called the book of the covenant, but books didn’t exist yet. People wrote on scrolls made of papyrus or animal hide.
- Genesis 8:20–9:11, 15:7–21; Luke 22:19–20.
- Matthew 26:28.
- Hebrews 8:6–7, 9:12–14.
- See Genesis 31:51–54.
- Exodus 33:11, 18–23.
- See Yahweh’s Arrival.
- Exodus 19:12, 21.
- See Sin.