Exodus 24

Chap. XXIV. Ver. 1—18. The covenant with God ratified by sacrifice—Two or three important circumstances in this chapter call for our remark. First, the covenant with God which was written by Moses, and contained the precepts recited in the preceding chapters, including the ten commandments. To this the people, on their part, all answer with one voice, and say as before, “All the words which the Lord hath said will we do.” A sacrifice of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings is then offered upon an altar, hastily erected beneath the mount; “and Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it both on the altar and on the people, saying, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.” Thus without shedding of blood there was no covenant, any more than there was remission of sins, for almost all things were by the law purged with blood.

((Hebrews 9:18-22).) For the doctrine of atonement is (as it were) the heart of both the old and new dispensations, without which there is no salvation under either. 2. After this, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, were admitted, if we may so express it, into the court of heaven, and beheld the glory of the divine majesty. “They saw the God of Israel:” the starry heavens themselves forming the pavement of his celestial throne. Some have supposed that Jehovah was here manifested in a human form: but since it is elsewhere said, that “they saw no manner of similitude in the mount,” it seems more reasonable to understand it of an appearance of glory only, as it is said, verse 17, it “was like devouring fire on the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel.” It is added, that they (the nobles, &c.) “did eat and drink,”

which the Jewish doctors explain figuratively: and the Chaldee paraphrase says, “They saw the glory of God, and rejoiced in their sacrifices which were accepted, as if they had eaten and drunk.” But as it was customary to partake of the sacrifices, especially the peace-offering, so it seems more natural to explain it literally, as do the Assembly’s annotators, of “making a sacred banquet on the sacrifices offered just before, which forms a proper type of the Lord’s Supper, which is a feast upon a sacrifice, wherein we enjoy communion with the Lord.” Lastly, Moses is again called up into the mountain alone, to receive the law, written “by the finger of God upon tablets of stone;” and there he abode forty days and nights, (perhaps including the six preceding,) as Elijah did afterwards in the same mount Horeb, and Jesus in the wilderness of Judea.

((1 Kings 19:8). (Matthew 4:2).)