Why Did God Choose Blood? Part 8 of 19

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The Blood of the Covenant: Why Did Moses Put Blood on the People?

Synopsis

In Part 7, blood was placed on a door. An animal died, its blood became God’s appointed sign, judgment passed through Egypt, and the firstborn behind that blood lived. But after Israel escapes Egypt and arrives at Mount Sinai, something changes. God does not tell Moses to put blood on another doorway. This time, Moses puts blood on the people.

Why? Israel has already been delivered. These are not people waiting for rescue from Pharaoh. God Himself explains why He brought them out of Egypt: “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” Deliverance had a destination. God was bringing a people into relationship with Himself.

At Sinai, God speaks His covenant words. Israel agrees to obey them. Moses builds an altar and twelve pillars representing the twelve tribes. Animals are sacrificed. Their blood is collected and divided. Part of the blood goes upon the altar. Then Moses reads the covenant to the people again. They agree again. Finally, Moses takes the remaining blood, sprinkles it upon the people, and makes an extraordinary declaration: “Behold the blood of the covenant.”

This is something we have not encountered before. At Passover, blood was associated with deliverance from death. At Sinai, blood is explicitly connected with covenant. But what does that mean? Why are sacrificed animals involved in establishing a relationship between God and Israel? Why does blood from the same sacrifices touch both the altar and the people? Does the blood represent life committed to the covenant? Does it demonstrate the seriousness of breaking that covenant? Does it somehow identify Israel as belonging to God?

And then something happens that I believe we have been overlooking. After the blood is applied, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel go up the mountain. They behold the God of Israel. Scripture specifically tells us that God does not lay His hand upon them. And then they eat and drink.

That changes this investigation. The blood of the covenant does not lead merely to laws and obligations. The ceremony ends with human beings entering God’s presence and sharing a meal before Him. That raises the possibility that what we are witnessing is not simply the signing of an ancient contract. We may be watching covenant relationship culminate in fellowship.

Look at the sequence. God speaks. The people agree. Sacrifice occurs. Blood is applied. The covenant is established. Representatives of the people approach God. And they eat and drink in His presence. Blood has moved from the doorway at Passover to the people at Sinai, and what follows is not another escape from death but fellowship with God.

Then centuries later, Jesus sits down for another meal. He takes bread and gives it to His disciples. Then He takes the cup and uses words that sound remarkably like Moses: “This is my blood of the covenant.” Suddenly the pieces begin coming together in a way I did not fully appreciate when this investigation began.

At Sinai there is sacrifice, blood, covenant, God’s people, eating, drinking, and fellowship in God’s presence. At Jesus’ final meal there is again eating, drinking, blood, and covenant, but now Jesus places Himself at the center of everything. The bread represents His body. The cup represents His blood. The covenant sacrifice and the covenant meal appear to converge upon one person.

There is an even larger question waiting for us later in this series. The Torah will eventually forbid Israel from drinking blood because the life of the flesh is in the blood. Yet Jesus will eventually say something that would have sounded shocking to people raised under those commandments: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

There is that word again: life. We are not going to answer that question yet because we have not reached the passage that explicitly explains why Israel was forbidden from consuming blood. But we need to mark it now because something appears to be developing across Scripture. Blood represents life. Sacrificed blood represents life surrendered. Passover blood is associated with deliverance from death. Sinai blood establishes covenant. After the covenant blood, people enter God’s presence and eat and drink. Then Jesus comes and identifies the new covenant blood as His own.

But Part 8 ends with a devastating problem. The people who have just promised obedience, received the blood of the covenant, and been represented at a meal before God almost immediately break that covenant by making the golden calf. That means covenant blood accomplished something real, but it did not make the human heart incapable of rebellion.

That raises the question that will carry us forward. What happens when people who have entered a blood covenant with God sin after the covenant has been established? Moses will attempt something extraordinary. He will stand before God and offer himself for the people. He will ask God to forgive them and even suggest that his own name be blotted from God’s book. God refuses his offer.

Why could Moses not give himself for Israel? Was the problem that one sinful human being could not ultimately bear the guilt of other sinful human beings? And is Scripture once again preparing us for someone who eventually can?

Part 8 therefore takes us another step toward answering the question behind this entire series. God may not have chosen blood because He desired death. Everything we have discovered continues pointing in the opposite direction. Blood matters because life matters.

And the biblical story may ultimately be leading toward the astonishing claim that God does not merely demand a life from humanity. Through His Son, He gives His own.

Investigation 1 – Why Did Passover Deliverance Lead to Covenant at Sinai?

When Israel walked out of Egypt, it would be easy to think the story of deliverance was finished. The firstborn had survived the night of Passover, Pharaoh had finally released the Israelites, and God had brought them through the sea while the Egyptian army pursuing them was destroyed. Israel was free from Pharaoh, but as we continue through Exodus, we discover that freedom from Egypt was never God’s final destination for them.

Exodus 19:4 gives us one of the most important statements for understanding what happens next. God reminds Israel, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” God does not merely say that He brought Israel out of Egypt. He says that He brought Israel to Himself, which means the Exodus was not simply an escape from slavery but a movement toward relationship with God.

That changes the way I think we should understand Passover. God did not deliver Israel merely so they could become an independent nation wandering wherever they wanted. He delivered them because He intended them to become His people. Passover removed them from Pharaoh’s authority, while Sinai begins establishing what it means for them to belong to God.

This is extremely important for our investigation of blood because it means the blood at Passover and the blood at Sinai are not performing exactly the same function. At Passover, judgment was approaching and the firstborn faced death. God commanded an animal to be killed, its blood to be placed upon the doorway, and the people to remain inside, and when God saw the blood He promised that destruction would not enter that house.

By Exodus 19, that particular danger is over. There is no destroyer moving through the camp and no firstborn waiting to see whether he will survive the night. Pharaoh is behind them, Egypt’s army is gone, and Israel has already experienced deliverance, yet blood is about to appear again because the biblical story has moved from the question of survival to the question of relationship.

God explains that relationship in Exodus 19:5–6 when He tells Israel that if they obey His voice and keep His covenant, they will become His treasured possession, “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” This is covenant language describing identity and belonging. God is not simply telling Israel what they escaped; He is beginning to tell them who they are now that He has brought them to Himself.

The order matters because God rescues Israel before the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24. He does not tell them to obey perfectly so that He might consider rescuing them from Pharaoh. He rescues them first, brings them to Sinai, and then establishes the covenant relationship, so the covenant is not the price Israel pays to earn the Exodus but the relationship into which their deliverance leads them.

Israel responds in Exodus 19:8 by saying, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do.” That response will appear again in Exodus 24, where God’s words are communicated to the people and Israel again agrees to them. Moses then writes those words down, sacrifices are offered, the covenant is read aloud, the people again promise obedience, and only then is blood applied.

That sequence prevents us from treating the blood as though it were magical. God speaks and the people hear Him, the people agree to the covenant, sacrifices occur, and the blood becomes part of the ceremony establishing that covenant relationship. Blood does not replace God’s word or Israel’s response to it; instead, blood becomes connected with the relationship created around those words.

There is another development at Sinai that may become extremely important later in this episode. God has rescued Israel, but that does not mean everyone can simply walk directly into His presence. Exodus 19 establishes boundaries around the mountain, and the people are warned not to break through those boundaries because approaching God’s presence carelessly could result in death.

The description of Sinai emphasizes how serious this encounter is. Thunder, lightning, thick cloud, smoke, fire, the sound of a trumpet, and the trembling mountain surround God’s descent. The Israelites themselves tremble, and the message is unmistakable that the God who delivered them desires relationship with them while remaining holy in a way they cannot approach casually.

This creates an interesting problem because God has just said that He brought Israel to Himself, yet barriers still remain between Israel and His immediate presence. They belong to Him, but they cannot simply climb the mountain. They have been delivered from Egypt, but deliverance alone has not erased the danger associated with approaching the presence of God.

Then we reach Exodus 24, and the sequence becomes extraordinary. Sacrifices are offered, blood is collected, blood is applied to the altar and the people, and Moses declares, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” Immediately afterward, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascend the mountain and encounter God.

Exodus 24:10 says that they “saw the God of Israel,” and the next verse specifically tells us that God did not lay His hand upon these leaders. That statement matters because the danger of approaching God has already been established. Yet these representatives of Israel ascend, encounter God’s presence, survive, and then Scripture tells us that they eat and drink.

We will investigate that meal separately because we should not make Exodus say more than it says. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore where the meal occurs in the narrative. God’s words are accepted, sacrifice occurs, covenant blood is applied, representatives of Israel draw near to God, they are not destroyed, and they eat and drink in His presence.

This gives us a much larger movement through Exodus than simply slavery followed by freedom. Israel moves from slavery to deliverance, from deliverance to covenant, and from covenant toward fellowship in God’s presence. Blood appears at two crucial points along that journey, but its function develops as the relationship develops.

At Passover, blood marks the place where judgment does not enter. At Sinai, blood is explicitly called “the blood of the covenant,” and what follows is an encounter between God and representatives of the people He has brought to Himself. We should not yet say that the blood itself granted them access because Exodus does not explicitly make that statement, but the narrative sequence makes the relationship between covenant blood and what follows impossible to ignore.

This also gives us an important clue for understanding where the biblical story eventually goes with Jesus. Christianity sometimes reduces salvation to escaping punishment, but Exodus presents something larger. God does not merely deliver people from death and then send them away; He delivers people because He intends to bring them into relationship with Himself.

The New Testament later uses the language of Exodus 19 when describing the people belonging to Christ. First Peter 2:9 calls believers “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people,” drawing directly upon the identity language God gave Israel at Sinai. The pattern remains one in which deliverance creates a people who belong to God and are called into His purposes.

This means our original question about blood may eventually have to become larger than we expected. We began by asking why blood appears when death threatens, but Sinai forces us to ask whether blood will also become connected with belonging to God and approaching Him. Passover showed us preservation of life, while Sinai may begin showing us what that preserved life is being preserved for.

God brought Israel out because He intended to bring Israel near. The people were not merely rescued from Pharaoh; they were brought toward covenant relationship and ultimately toward fellowship with God. That is why Passover leads to Sinai, and it is why the next appearance of blood cannot simply be treated as another version of the Passover doorway.

Before Moses can call anything “the blood of the covenant,” however, animals must again surrender their lives. This time Exodus specifically tells us that burnt offerings and peace offerings were sacrificed, and that distinction may tell us something important about what God is establishing at Sinai. Understanding why those particular sacrifices appear is therefore the next piece of the investigation.

Investigation 2 – Why Were Burnt Offerings and Peace Offerings Used to Establish the Covenant?

When we reach Exodus 24, something happens before Moses ever sprinkles blood upon the people. Exodus 24:5 says that Moses sent young men of Israel who “offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD.” That detail can easily become background scenery because our attention naturally moves toward the blood in the following verses. But if we are investigating why God chose blood, we need to stop here. The blood Moses is about to call “the blood of the covenant” comes from specific sacrifices.

The first type mentioned is the burnt offering. The Hebrew term is olah, an offering characterized by ascending toward God and, in its later detailed instructions, being consumed upon the altar. Unlike sacrifices from which worshipers could receive portions to eat, the burnt offering represented something given over to God in its entirety. We need to be careful about importing every later Levitical regulation backward into Exodus 24, but the basic idea of an offering wholly presented to God is already important.

Then Exodus mentions peace offerings. The Hebrew term is shelamim, sometimes translated peace offerings, fellowship offerings, or well-being offerings. These become particularly interesting because later Torah instructions show that peace offerings are not entirely burned. Portions belong at the altar, portions belong to the priests, and portions can be eaten by the worshiper. Unlike the burnt offering, the peace offering becomes associated with a shared sacrificial meal.

That immediately makes Exodus 24 more interesting because of what happens only a few verses later. After the sacrifices, after the blood ceremony, and after Moses declares “the blood of the covenant,” Moses and the representatives of Israel ascend the mountain. There they encounter God, survive His presence, and “eat and drink.” Exodus does not explicitly tell us that the food they eat comes from the peace offerings of verse 5, so we cannot state that as fact. But the presence of peace offerings immediately before a covenant meal means the possibility deserves serious attention.

Why would both kinds of offerings appear together? One possibility is that they communicate two dimensions of the covenant relationship. The burnt offering expresses complete dedication toward God, while the peace offering is associated with fellowship and shared celebration. If that understanding is correct, the covenant ceremony contains both surrender and communion: Israel belongs to God, but Israel is also being brought into fellowship with God.

We need to keep that conclusion cautious because Exodus 24 never stops to explain the symbolism of each offering. Moses does not say, “This burnt offering represents dedication, and this peace offering represents fellowship.” Nevertheless, later Torah gives these sacrifices recognizable functions, and the narrative placement of the peace offerings immediately before eating and drinking in God’s presence is difficult to dismiss as meaningless.

There is something else important here. The animals are not killed simply so Moses can obtain blood. Exodus calls what happens sacrifices. That means the blood used in the covenant ceremony comes from lives that have been deliberately offered to God. Moses does not obtain blood from an animal that died naturally, nor does he merely cut an animal enough to collect blood and allow it to continue living. The blood comes through sacrificial death.

That takes us directly back to the trail we have been following since Genesis. Blood does not appear independently of life. The animal possesses life, the animal dies, and the blood produced by that surrendered life becomes something God uses in the covenant ceremony. Once again, blood appears to carry meaning because of the life from which it came.

Genesis 15 gives us an earlier covenant scene that deserves to remain in the background. When God establishes His covenant with Abraham, animals are brought, slaughtered, and divided. A smoking furnace and burning lamp then pass between the pieces. Blood is not emphasized there in the way Exodus 24 emphasizes it, but sacrificed life and covenant already appeared together generations before Sinai.

This connects with an ancient expression found throughout the Hebrew Bible. The ordinary Hebrew wording for making a covenant is karat berit, literally “to cut a covenant.” Scholars have long connected that expression with ceremonies involving slaughtered animals, although we should be careful about claiming that every biblical covenant involved animals being physically cut apart. Still, the language reminds us that covenant in the ancient world could carry a seriousness far beyond signing a modern contract.

Some ancient Near Eastern covenant and treaty ceremonies used slaughtered animals to dramatize what could happen to someone who violated an oath. Jeremiah 34 gives us a particularly useful biblical example much later. People make a covenant, cut a calf in two, and pass between its pieces. When they violate their agreement, God speaks of giving the covenant breakers over like the calf they had cut apart. There the relationship between slaughtered life, covenant obligation, and consequences becomes much clearer.

We should not automatically impose Jeremiah 34’s exact explanation upon Exodus 24, because Exodus does not say that the animals represent what should happen to Israel if the covenant is broken. But Jeremiah demonstrates that within the Bible itself, sacrificed animals could participate in covenant ceremonies carrying life-and-death seriousness. That makes the sacrifices at Sinai more understandable.

A covenant with God is not a casual promise.

Israel has just said, “All that the LORD hath said will we do.” These words concern how Israel will live as God’s people. The covenant regulates worship, justice, violence, property, sexuality, treatment of strangers, treatment of the poor, Sabbath, and loyalty to God. Israel is not agreeing to a small religious ceremony. The people are committing their lives to an entirely new relationship.

That may help explain why blood is appropriate. If blood represents life, then covenant blood may communicate something about life being placed under covenant. The people are not merely signing their names beneath God’s commandments. Their lives now belong within the relationship God has established with them.

But there is another side we cannot ignore. Covenant with God involves not only life but also the possibility of death when the covenant is violated. The Torah will eventually place before Israel “life and death, blessing and cursing.” That fuller language comes later, so we should not pretend Exodus 24 says everything Deuteronomy eventually says. Still, the covenant Israel enters at Sinai clearly carries consequences.

This makes the combination of burnt offerings and peace offerings particularly fascinating. The ceremony is serious enough to involve sacrificed life, yet it is not presented merely as terror. Peace offerings are present, and the ceremony ultimately leads to representatives of Israel eating and drinking before God. Death is present, but fellowship is where the narrative is going.

That distinction may become important to our larger question of why God chose blood. If we focus only upon the death of the animals, we might conclude that God simply demands death whenever humans approach Him. But Exodus 24 does not end with dead animals. It ends with living people in God’s presence.

The sacrifices appear to serve the relationship rather than being the destination of the relationship. Something dies, blood is used to establish the covenant, and then people who were previously forbidden from breaking through the boundary of the mountain are represented by leaders who ascend, behold God, survive, and share a meal before Him.

That movement deserves our attention because it begins challenging the idea that biblical blood theology is fundamentally about God’s desire for death. Everything we have discovered keeps returning to life. At Passover, an animal dies so that threatened life is preserved. At Sinai, animals die and their blood participates in establishing a covenant that ultimately brings God’s people toward fellowship with Him.

There is another detail we should preserve for later. The peace offering will eventually become one of the clearest places in Israel’s sacrificial system where sacrifice and eating exist together. Part of the sacrifice belongs to God, while part becomes food within a sacred meal. We should remember that when we eventually return to Jesus, because Jesus establishes His new-covenant language in the setting of a meal.

For now, however, we should not jump there. Exodus still has something to show us before the blood reaches the people. Moses builds an altar beneath the mountain and erects twelve pillars “according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” Only after those structures are standing are the sacrifices offered and the blood divided.

That means the blood ceremony has an architecture.

There is an altar.

There are twelve pillars.

There is sacrificed life.

And soon the same blood will be brought into relationship with the altar and the covenant people.

Before we ask why Moses divided that blood, we need to understand why God has an altar standing opposite twelve pillars in the first place. That physical arrangement may tell us something about exactly who is entering covenant with whom, and that is where Investigation 3 takes us.

Investigation 3 – Why Were There an Altar and Twelve Pillars?

Before Moses divides the blood, Exodus gives us a detail that is easy to read past. Exodus 24:4 says Moses “builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” If we are following every step in the development of blood, those structures matter because they are standing there before the animals are sacrificed and before the blood is applied. The covenant ceremony has been given a physical shape.

The twelve pillars are the easier part to understand because Exodus tells us what they represent. They correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel. Israel is not entering this covenant merely as thousands of unrelated individuals. The entire nation is being represented as one covenant people composed of twelve tribes, and the pillars make that collective identity visible at the foot of the mountain.

The altar is more complicated. It would be tempting to say simply that the altar represents God while the twelve pillars represent Israel, creating two visible sides of the covenant. That interpretation makes sense and has often been suggested, but Exodus never explicitly tells us that the altar is a symbolic representation of God. We should therefore state something more carefully. The altar belongs to the divine side of the sacrificial ceremony, while the twelve pillars explicitly correspond to Israel.

That distinction matters because of what Moses does next. The animals are sacrificed, and Moses takes half of their blood and places it in basins while the other half is dashed against the altar. Later, after the covenant words are read and Israel agrees to them again, the remaining blood is applied to the people. The same sacrificial event therefore reaches both the altar and Israel.

This is where the architecture begins to become important. Before any blood is applied, there is an altar associated with worship of God and twelve pillars representing the people. Then animals surrender their lives, and blood from those sacrifices enters the covenant ceremony. The blood reaches the altar first and afterward reaches the covenant people.

Some scholars have interpreted this as a form of covenant kinship. The idea is that blood from the same sacrificed life ritually joins the parties within one covenant relationship. We need to be careful with that language because Exodus never says that God and Israel literally become blood relatives. Nevertheless, the idea deserves consideration because covenant elsewhere in Scripture can create relationships described with family language.

God has already called Israel His son. Exodus 4:22 said, “Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” At Sinai, God speaks of Israel as His treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. So the covenant being established is not merely political. The relationship already carries language of belonging and family.

That makes the blood particularly interesting. Blood ordinarily connects biological families because blood comes from shared life, but here Israel’s covenant relationship with God is not biological. God is not physically related to Israel. Yet sacrificed blood is now being used within the ceremony establishing the relationship between them.

We should not jump from that observation to saying, “The blood makes Israel God’s blood family,” because the text does not say that. But we can ask whether blood is functioning as a sign that Israel’s life now belongs within God’s covenant. If blood represents life, then applying sacrificial blood within the covenant ceremony may signify something deeper than simply signing an agreement.

There is another reason the twelve pillars matter. Israel had previously been defined by slavery. Egypt determined where they worked, what they produced, and whether their sons lived. Now Israel is standing before God as twelve tribes represented by twelve pillars. Their identity is being reorganized around covenant rather than Pharaoh.

That means Sinai is doing something to Israel’s identity. God has rescued them from one master and brought them into relationship with Himself. The covenant tells them who they are, whom they belong to, how they are to live, and what distinguishes them from the nations around them.

The blood ceremony therefore occurs at a moment of new identity. At Passover, blood appeared while Israel was leaving Egypt. At Sinai, blood appears as Israel formally becomes God’s covenant nation. The movement seems to be from liberation to belonging.

This may also explain why the altar and pillars appear before the sacrifices. The covenant parties are being identified before the covenant is ratified. Israel stands symbolically in the twelve pillars, while the altar stands at the center of worship directed toward God. Then the sacrificial blood is introduced into that relationship.

There is a fascinating contrast with Genesis 15. When God established His covenant with Abraham, Abraham divided animals and God symbolically passed between the pieces. Abraham himself did not pass through with God in the form described in the text. The covenant depended heavily upon God’s promise and God’s action.

At Sinai, however, Israel speaks. The people repeatedly say that they will obey. The covenant contains obligations placed upon them, and the blood ceremony follows their acceptance of those obligations. This covenant therefore involves not only what God promises but how Israel agrees to live as God’s people.

That helps us understand why the words and blood cannot be separated. Moses first writes God’s words. Then the sacrifices occur. Then Moses takes the Book of the Covenant and reads it to the people. Israel responds, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Only after that does Moses apply the blood and declare that it is “the blood of the covenant” God has made with them “concerning all these words.”

The blood is therefore not establishing a vague spiritual relationship. It is ratifying a relationship defined by God’s words. Israel is entering a covenant that has content, responsibilities, promises, and consequences.

This is where the possibility that blood represents life becomes increasingly significant. Israel is not merely agreeing intellectually that God’s commandments are good. The people are placing their lives under those words. Their worship, families, property, justice, treatment of neighbors, treatment of strangers, Sabbath, and relationship with God will now be governed by the covenant they have accepted.

If blood represents life, covenant blood is remarkably appropriate imagery for that kind of commitment. Their lives are now bound to the covenant.

But there may also be a darker side. Covenant creates relationship, but covenant can be broken. The sacrificed animals introduce death into a ceremony in which Israel has promised obedience. We cannot yet say that the animals explicitly represent the punishment Israel deserves if the covenant is broken because Exodus 24 never explains them that way. Later biblical covenant ceremonies, however, show that slaughtered animals could communicate the life-and-death seriousness of covenant violation.

That possibility becomes especially powerful because we know what happens next in Exodus. Israel has barely entered the covenant before the people build the golden calf. The twelve tribes represented by those pillars, whose representatives have accepted the covenant and received its blood, will almost immediately violate the words they promised to obey.

That means the altar and twelve pillars are not merely decorative details. They establish visually what is at stake. God and Israel are entering a defined relationship, and the sacrificed blood belongs to the ceremony binding Israel to that covenant.

But something even more interesting happens when we follow the blood itself. Moses does not take one animal’s blood for the altar and another animal’s blood for Israel. The blood comes from the same sacrificial event and is divided. Part reaches the altar, while the remainder is reserved until it can be applied to the people.

That raises a question more precise than anything we have asked so far at Sinai. Why does the same blood need to touch both the altar and the covenant people? Is it merely ceremonial symmetry, or is Moses symbolically bringing God and Israel under one covenant bond through the life represented by that blood?

We cannot answer that by assumption. We need to examine exactly what Exodus says, what ancient covenant practices may illuminate, and what later Scripture does with this moment. That is important because if the same sacrificial blood deliberately reaches both the divine side of the ceremony and the people, we may be looking at the earliest major biblical picture of blood not simply protecting life but joining lives within covenant relationship.

That is where Investigation 4 takes us.

Investigation 4 – Why Was the Same Blood Put on the Altar and the People?

Now we arrive at one of the strangest details in the Sinai covenant ceremony. Exodus 24:6 tells us that Moses took half of the blood from the sacrifices and put it into basins, while the other half he sprinkled, dashed, or threw against the altar. Then, after reading the Book of the Covenant and hearing Israel promise obedience, Moses took the blood that had been reserved and sprinkled it upon the people. The blood from the same group of sacrifices therefore reached two different places: the altar and Israel.

Why divide it this way? Exodus never gives us a sentence explaining the symbolism, so this is one of those places where we need to separate what we know from what we suspect. We know that Moses deliberately divided the blood. We know that one portion was applied to the altar. We know that another portion was reserved for the people. We know that after applying it to the people Moses called it “the blood of the covenant.” What we do not know from Exodus alone is precisely why the blood had to be divided between them.

The most obvious possibility is that the ceremony is connecting the parties involved in the covenant. As we saw in the previous investigation, Moses had built an altar and twelve pillars corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. The altar belongs to the worship directed toward God, while the pillars visibly represent Israel. Now sacrificial blood enters that arrangement, touching the altar and then the people themselves.

This is why some interpreters have understood the ceremony as symbolically joining God and Israel within one covenant bond. I think there is something valuable in that interpretation as long as we do not push it farther than the text allows. Exodus does not say that God receives one half of the blood while Israel receives the other because they are becoming literal blood relatives. What Exodus does show is that blood from the same sacrificial event is deliberately brought into contact with both the altar and the covenant people.

That may tell us something about what covenant means. A covenant is not simply God standing far away and issuing rules to Israel. God has already said that He brought Israel to Himself. Now the relationship is being formally established, and sacrificed life represented by blood appears on both sides of the covenant ceremony. The same blood that reaches the altar also reaches the people who have promised to obey God’s words.

There is another detail that makes this even more interesting. Moses does not immediately put the second portion of blood upon the people. He first takes the Book of the Covenant and reads it aloud. Exodus 24:7 says the people respond, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Only after they hear the covenant and accept it does Moses apply the blood.

That means the blood is not being imposed upon people who have no idea what is happening. Israel hears the covenant terms, verbally accepts them, and then receives the blood associated with that covenant. Moses immediately explains what has happened by saying, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.”

Those final words are crucial. Moses does not merely say, “Behold the blood.” He connects the blood to the covenant and connects the covenant to “all these words.” Blood, relationship, and God’s word are therefore bound together in the ceremony. Israel has heard God’s terms, accepted them, and now sacrificial blood marks the covenant they have entered.

This helps us avoid another possible mistake in our investigation. We should not automatically assume that this blood is functioning exactly like Passover blood. At Passover, God explicitly says the blood will be a sign and that when He sees it He will pass over the house. Here God never says, “When I see this blood, I will spare you from destruction.” The immediate context is different because the function of the blood has developed.

Nor should we automatically call this a sin offering. Exodus 24 tells us that the animals were burnt offerings and peace offerings. Moses calls the resulting blood “the blood of the covenant,” not “the blood of the sin offering.” Later Scripture may interpret this ceremony through broader ideas of purification and atonement, but if we are allowing the biblical story to unfold in order, covenant is the explicit meaning given here.

This is important because it tells us that blood does not have only one biblical function. We have already seen blood testify to murder in Abel’s story. We have seen blood associated with life in Genesis 9. We have seen sacrificed life in covenant with Abraham. We have seen substitution explicitly stated with Isaac and the ram. We have seen Passover blood become God’s appointed sign during judgment. Now blood is being used to ratify covenant relationship.

The common thread underneath these events increasingly appears to be life. Blood matters because it belongs to a living creature and becomes visible when that life is surrendered. At Sinai, the blood Moses uses does not come from nowhere. Animals have died, and the blood of those sacrificed lives is now used in the ceremony through which Israel commits itself to God.

This raises an interesting possibility. If blood represents life, then the same blood reaching altar and people may communicate a shared covenant relationship involving life itself. Israel is not merely promising to follow a list of religious regulations. Israel’s entire national life is being placed within God’s covenant. Their worship, justice, families, property, treatment of the poor, treatment of strangers, Sabbath, and allegiance to God now belong within this relationship.

There may also be a life-and-death seriousness underneath the ceremony. Later biblical covenant passages show that covenant violation can carry severe consequences, and Israel will soon discover that reality after the golden calf. We should not say that Exodus 24 explicitly tells us, “The dead animals represent what will happen to Israel if they break the covenant,” because it does not. But sacrificed life appearing alongside solemn covenant promises certainly prevents us from treating this as a casual agreement.

There is something else here that becomes fascinating when we look ahead without allowing the later text to control everything prematurely. At Sinai, Moses serves as mediator. God speaks, Moses carries God’s words to the people, the people respond, Moses brings their response within the covenant ceremony, sacrifices are offered, and Moses handles the blood between the altar and Israel. The covenant is being established through a mediator who stands between God and the people.

That role will eventually become extremely important. Hebrews will later describe Jesus as “the mediator of the new covenant” and directly discuss Moses, covenant, and blood. We should save the full comparison for Investigation 7, but it is worth noticing now that the Sinai covenant is not simply God and Israel interacting without mediation. Moses stands between them, carrying words and handling covenant blood.

This makes Jesus’ later words at the Last Supper even more striking. Moses takes the blood of sacrificed animals and says, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” Jesus eventually takes the cup and says, “This is my blood of the covenant.” The wording is close enough that we will have to investigate whether Jesus is deliberately placing Himself inside the Sinai pattern.

But something changes dramatically. Moses is the mediator handling someone else’s blood. Jesus will be the mediator speaking about His own blood. At Sinai, the mediator does not die to establish the covenant. Animals provide the sacrificed life, and Moses applies their blood. In the New Testament, the mediator and the sacrificed life begin to converge in the same person.

We should not race ahead because Exodus still has something extraordinary to show us first. Before we get to Jesus, we need to understand what Moses himself says the blood means. He does not call it protection blood, Passover blood, or even primarily forgiveness blood. He gives it a specific name that Scripture will remember for centuries: “the blood of the covenant.”

That phrase may be one of the most important developments we have encountered so far because it tells us that blood can signify belonging within a relationship established by God. The same sacrificed blood touches the altar and the people, while God’s words define the covenant connecting them. Life represented by blood has entered the relationship between God and Israel.

Then something happens that makes the entire ceremony even more remarkable. After the covenant is ratified, representatives of Israel ascend the mountain. The people who had previously been warned not to break through the boundary are now represented before God by Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders. They behold God, He does not destroy them, and they eat and drink in His presence.

That means the blood ceremony is moving somewhere. It is not ending with dead animals, blood, fear, and distance. The narrative is moving toward living people in fellowship before God. Before we investigate that meal, however, we need to understand Moses’ declaration itself and ask exactly what Scripture means when it calls sacrificed life “the blood of the covenant.” That is the question Investigation 5 must answer.

Investigation 5 – What Did Moses Mean by “The Blood of the Covenant”?

We have reached the sentence that may define everything happening at Sinai. Moses has built the altar and twelve pillars. Burnt offerings and peace offerings have been sacrificed. Part of the blood has been placed upon the altar. The Book of the Covenant has been read aloud, and Israel has responded, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Then Moses takes the remaining blood, applies it to the people, and explains what they are witnessing: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.”

Those words give us something we desperately need in this investigation because Moses actually tells us what category this blood belongs to. He does not call it the blood of punishment. He does not call it the blood of Passover. He does not even call it the blood of forgiveness. He calls it “the blood of the covenant.” Whatever additional meaning later Scripture discovers in this ceremony, Exodus wants us first to understand the blood in connection with the covenant God is establishing with Israel.

The Hebrew expression is dam habberit, literally “blood of the covenant.” The word berit, covenant, describes the binding relationship being established between God and Israel. This is not simply an emotional promise between two parties. God has spoken specific words describing how Israel is to live, Israel has heard those words and accepted them, and the blood ceremony formally ratifies the relationship established “concerning all these words.”

That last phrase matters enormously. The blood is not presented as a substitute for obedience. Israel cannot receive covenant blood and then conclude that God’s commandments no longer matter. The people hear God’s words before the blood is applied, and they promise obedience before Moses calls it covenant blood. Blood and covenant obedience are therefore not enemies in Exodus 24. They belong to the same relationship.

This becomes especially important when we remember what happens almost immediately afterward. Israel will violate the covenant through the golden calf. The people have received the blood of the covenant, but that blood does not give them permission to disregard the covenant. Their rebellion still matters, judgment still follows, and Moses must intercede. Whatever covenant blood accomplishes here, it does not mean that future disobedience has become irrelevant.

So what does the blood actually do? At the most cautious level, we can say that it ratifies the covenant. Sacrificial blood marks the formal establishment of the relationship between God and Israel. The covenant has been spoken, written, heard, accepted, and now solemnized through sacrificed life. Moses’ own explanation ties the blood directly to the covenant that has just been accepted.

But our investigation cannot stop with the word “ratification” because that can sound like blood is simply an ancient version of ink on a contract. Everything we have discovered about blood suggests something much more serious. Blood is connected with life, and the blood Moses handles exists because animals have surrendered their lives. A covenant sealed with blood therefore carries a life-and-death seriousness that a signature cannot communicate.

This may help explain why Scripture speaks of covenant as something involving the whole person. Israel is not agreeing to attend a ceremony once a year. Their lives are entering a new order. Their worship, justice, families, sexuality, property, treatment of servants, treatment of strangers, Sabbath, festivals, and allegiance are all being placed under God’s covenant. When Moses says the covenant concerns “all these words,” the relationship reaches into everyday life.

There is another important distinction we need to preserve. The blood does not appear to create God’s love for Israel. God has already acted for them before Sinai. He heard their cries in Egypt, remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, confronted Pharaoh, protected Israel during the plagues, brought them through the sea, fed them in the wilderness, and brought them to Sinai. God does not begin caring about Israel because animals die in Exodus 24.

That means the sacrifice is not persuading an unwilling God to enter relationship with people He previously rejected. God initiated the relationship. God rescued Israel. God brought them to Himself. God proposed the covenant. The blood ceremony formally establishes a relationship that God Himself has initiated.

That is important for our larger investigation because it challenges a common way of imagining sacrifice. The biblical story does not begin with angry humanity trying to calm an angry God by offering blood. At Sinai, God is the One who has already rescued the people and invited them into covenant. Blood appears within God’s provision for that relationship.

Now consider what happens when Moses applies the blood to the people. The blood of another life is being placed upon living human beings. We should not say that the animals literally become substitutes for every Israelite in the same explicit sense that the ram was offered “instead of” Isaac because Exodus 24 never says that. But the relationship between sacrificed life and covenant people is impossible to miss. Animals die, their blood is taken, and that blood becomes the blood by which the covenant is ratified.

There may therefore be several ideas converging here without being identical. Sacrifice demonstrates that life has been surrendered. Blood represents that life. The covenant concerns Israel’s life with God. The same sacrificial blood reaches the altar and the people. Moses then declares that this is covenant blood. What began in Genesis as blood associated with life is becoming part of the language through which God establishes relationship.

This gives us another major step toward answering why God chose blood. Perhaps blood is appropriate for covenant precisely because covenant is not merely an exchange of information. Covenant concerns belonging, loyalty, relationship, and life. If the life is in the blood, then blood becomes an extraordinarily powerful sign for a relationship in which people’s lives now belong to God.

Later Scripture strengthens this life-and-covenant connection. Deuteronomy eventually places before Israel “life and death, blessing and cursing” and urges them to “choose life.” We should not pretend those later words are the explicit explanation of Exodus 24, but they show where Torah itself takes covenant theology. Life with God and rejection of God ultimately become questions of life and death.

Then something remarkable happens when we move forward to Jeremiah. Israel repeatedly breaks the covenant established at Sinai, and Jeremiah 31 announces that God will make “a new covenant” with His people. The problem is no longer simply that Israel lacks commandments. They already have God’s words. Jeremiah says something deeper must happen: God will put His law within them and write it upon their hearts.

That is enormously important, but we should not solve it yet. Exodus 24 gives Israel God’s words externally, and Israel sincerely promises to obey them. Yet Exodus 32 will show how quickly the human heart can violate what the mouth has promised. The blood of the covenant establishes a real relationship, but it does not by itself transform Israel into people incapable of rebellion.

Centuries later, Jesus sits at a meal with His disciples and uses Moses’ language. In Mark’s account Jesus takes the cup and says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many.” Matthew gives essentially the same declaration, while Luke and Paul speak of “the new covenant” in Jesus’ blood. Once we have carefully examined Exodus 24, it becomes difficult to hear those words without Sinai echoing behind them.

But there is a profound difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses stands between God and Israel as mediator, but the blood in his hands belongs to sacrificed animals. Moses can say, “Behold the blood of the covenant,” while pointing to blood that came from another life. Jesus takes the covenant language and says, in effect, that the blood of the coming covenant will be His.

The mediator and the sacrifice begin to converge.

That is something Moses could never say at Sinai. He never tells Israel to establish the covenant through his blood. He handles the blood of another sacrificed life. Jesus, however, speaks of His own life being poured out, and Hebrews will eventually identify Him not merely with covenant sacrifice but as mediator of the new covenant.

There is still something in Exodus 24 that we need to see before going fully to Jesus, because the covenant ceremony does not end when Moses says, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” If it ended there, we might interpret the entire event as a solemn legal ratification and move on. Instead, the narrative continues into one of the most astonishing scenes in the Torah.

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend toward God. They behold the God of Israel, yet God does not lay His hand upon them. These living representatives of the covenant people stand in the presence that Israel had previously been warned not to approach carelessly, and then Scripture gives us an almost startlingly ordinary description of what happens next.

They eat and drink.

That means the destination of the blood-of-the-covenant ceremony is not a pile of dead animals. The story moves beyond sacrifice toward living people in God’s presence. The covenant is not merely about what Israel must do for God; it creates a relationship in which representatives of Israel can sit before God in fellowship.

This may be one of the most important developments we have encountered. Passover blood was followed by Israel leaving the place of slavery. Covenant blood at Sinai is followed by representatives of Israel entering the presence of God. One blood event accompanies deliverance from death, while the other leads into a scene of covenant fellowship.

And that raises the question we now have to investigate carefully. Why does Exodus deliberately tell us that after the blood of the covenant, they ate and drank before God? If that meal is part of the covenant event, then centuries later Jesus establishing His new covenant while His disciples eat and drink may carry far more meaning than we first realized.

That is where Investigation 6 takes us.

Investigation 6 – Why Did They Eat and Drink With God, and Why Does Jesus Bring the Blood and the Meal Together?

Immediately after Moses declares, “Behold the blood of the covenant,” Exodus gives us one of the strangest and most beautiful scenes we have encountered in this investigation. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascend the mountain. Exodus says they “saw the God of Israel,” and then specifically tells us that God did not lay His hand upon them. Instead of dying in His presence, “they saw God, and did eat and drink.”

We need to remember how extraordinary this is because only a few chapters earlier God had placed boundaries around Sinai. Israel was warned not to break through and approach the mountain carelessly. God’s presence was accompanied by thunder, lightning, fire, smoke, trembling, and the threat of death. Yet after the covenant ceremony, representatives of Israel ascend toward the very presence they had been warned not to approach.

Something has happened between those two scenes. God has spoken His covenant words, Israel has accepted them, sacrifices have been offered, blood has touched the altar and the people, and Moses has declared that blood to be “the blood of the covenant.” Only then do representatives of Israel ascend, behold God, survive, and eat and drink before Him.

We should be careful not to say more than Exodus says. The text never explicitly states that the blood gave the elders permission to approach God, nor does it tell us exactly what they ate and drank. It is possible that the meal involved the peace offerings mentioned earlier in Exodus 24, especially because peace offerings later become strongly associated with sacred meals, but Exodus does not explicitly identify the food. What we can confidently observe is the sequence: sacrifice, covenant blood, approach to God, survival in His presence, and eating and drinking.

That sequence may reveal something important about the destination of covenant. God did not rescue Israel merely to place them under another system of rules. Exodus 19 already told us God’s purpose when He said, “I brought you unto myself.” Now Exodus 24 gives us a picture of what being brought to God can look like. Representatives of the covenant people are standing before Him in fellowship rather than running from Him in terror.

This changes the way I think we should describe the blood story. The destination is not death. Animals have died, but the story continues beyond their deaths. Living people enter God’s presence. Blood participates in establishing a covenant relationship that culminates, at least in this scene, with human beings eating and drinking before God.

Meals already carry relational meaning elsewhere in Scripture. Abraham prepares food for his mysterious visitors in Genesis 18. Isaac and Abimelech share a feast around the establishment of peace in Genesis 26. Jacob and Laban sacrifice and eat together when establishing their covenant in Genesis 31. Eating together can communicate peace, hospitality, relationship, and fellowship, which makes the meal of Exodus 24 particularly appropriate after covenant ratification.

There is also an important connection with Passover. Passover itself was not merely a blood ritual; it was a meal. The Israelites killed the Passover animal, placed its blood upon the doorway, and ate its flesh inside the house. The blood was not consumed. The flesh was eaten while the blood was placed where God commanded it to be placed.

Now at Sinai we encounter sacrifice, blood, and eating again, although arranged differently. Blood is placed upon the altar and people, and afterward Israel’s representatives eat and drink before God. We should not pretend Passover and Sinai are identical ceremonies, but both events connect sacrificed life, blood, and a meal with a major development in Israel’s relationship with God.

That distinction between flesh and blood will eventually become extremely important. Israel could eat sacrificial meat under appropriate circumstances, but Israel was forbidden from consuming blood. Later, Leviticus 17 will explain why in language directly connected with the question driving this entire series: “the life of the flesh is in the blood.”

We have not reached that passage yet, so I do not want to steal the answer from a later episode. But we need to place a marker here because something remarkable eventually happens. The Torah will prohibit drinking blood because of its unique relationship with life, and Jesus will later use the shocking language of eating His flesh and drinking His blood in connection with receiving life.

Before reaching John 6, however, something even more direct happens at Jesus’ final meal with His disciples. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. Then He takes the cup and speaks words that should sound familiar after Exodus 24: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many.”

That language takes us directly back to Moses. Exodus 24:8 says, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” Mark 14:24 records Jesus saying, “This is my blood of the covenant.” Matthew preserves essentially the same connection, while Luke and Paul speak of the “new covenant” in Jesus’ blood. Jesus is not introducing covenant-blood vocabulary from nowhere. Israel had heard these words before.

But Jesus changes something enormous. Moses is the mediator of the Sinai covenant, but Moses handles the blood of another life. Animals die, Moses takes their blood, and he declares it to be covenant blood. Moses himself remains separate from the sacrificed life whose blood establishes the covenant.

Jesus does something different. He does not take an animal’s blood and say, “This is the blood of the covenant.” He identifies the covenant blood as His own. The mediator is no longer merely handling the blood of the sacrifice. The mediator is becoming the sacrifice whose blood establishes the covenant.

Then consider the meal surrounding those words. At Sinai, sacrificed blood establishes covenant and is followed by representatives of Israel eating and drinking before God. At Jesus’ final supper, the covenant declaration itself occurs while Jesus and His disciples are eating and drinking. Covenant blood and covenant meal are brought together at the table.

Even more strikingly, Jesus places Himself at the center of both. The bread is associated with His body, and the cup is associated with His blood. At Sinai, the sacrifice, mediator, blood, and covenant meal remain distinguishable elements. At the Last Supper, those categories begin converging upon one person.

Hebrews later makes the connection even harder to ignore. Hebrews 9 looks back toward Moses, covenant, sacrifice, and blood while explaining the work of Christ. Hebrews describes Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant and contrasts His work with the blood of animals. The New Testament therefore does not merely allow Christians to notice similarities between Sinai and Jesus; it deliberately uses Sinai’s covenant categories to explain who Jesus is and what His death accomplishes.

This brings us back to something we have been observing throughout this series. The Old Testament appears repeatedly to establish the work before revealing the worker. Genesis established blood and life. Moriah established explicit substitution when the ram was offered instead of Isaac. Passover established sacrificed life, blood, deliverance from death, and a meal. Sinai now establishes sacrificed blood as covenant blood and follows it with fellowship in God’s presence.

Then Jesus begins gathering those categories around Himself. He is identified with Passover. He speaks about giving His life. He identifies His own blood as covenant blood. He establishes that covenant at a meal. Eventually He speaks of eating His flesh and drinking His blood in connection with possessing life.

That does not mean Exodus 24 secretly teaches Communion in a way its original audience could have understood completely. Nor should we claim that Moses and the seventy elders were symbolically drinking Christ’s blood. They were not. The stronger conclusion is that Scripture develops a vocabulary and a pattern over time, and Jesus eventually takes that established vocabulary and applies it to Himself.

There is another reason we should be cautious before fully interpreting Jesus’ command to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Leviticus has not yet given us the explicit explanation for the prohibition against consuming blood. When we reach that point in our investigation, we will be able to place Leviticus 17 beside John 6 and ask the question properly. Why would God forbid people from consuming blood because life is in the blood, and then Jesus deliberately use the language of drinking His blood in order to have life?

That question may eventually bring us closer to the answer behind this entire nineteen-part investigation than anything we have encountered so far. Perhaps the deepest issue was never blood as a substance. Perhaps the issue has always been the life represented by blood.

At Passover, a life is surrendered and other lives are preserved. At Sinai, surrendered life becomes covenant blood, and covenant representatives subsequently eat and drink before God. With Jesus, the covenant blood belongs to the mediator Himself, and the covenant meal becomes centered upon His body and His blood.

The direction of the story therefore appears increasingly relational. God rescues people from death in order to bring them to Himself. Covenant establishes belonging. Fellowship brings them into His presence. The sacrifices along the way are not the destination; living with God is the destination.

That makes the final scene of Exodus 24 especially beautiful. The chapter does not end with blood dripping from an altar or animals lying dead beneath Sinai. It ends with living human beings before God, eating and drinking. Death has occurred within the covenant ceremony, but life in God’s presence is where the ceremony leads.

Then Jesus eventually sits at another table and identifies Himself with the covenant sacrifice, covenant blood, and covenant meal. He does not merely tell His followers how to approach God. The New Testament will increasingly present Him as the One through whom they approach God.

But Exodus immediately introduces a devastating problem. The people who have just said, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient,” are about to build the golden calf. The people who have entered a blood-ratified covenant are about to violate that covenant almost immediately.

That means covenant blood accomplished something real, but it did not remove humanity’s ability to rebel. The blood established the relationship, but Israel’s heart could still turn away from the God who had brought them to Himself. That failure will force our investigation into another question: what happens when people inside the covenant sin?

And when Moses sees what has happened, he will eventually make an extraordinary offer. He will offer himself before God for the people and ask to be blotted from God’s book. God will not accept that offer, and understanding why may reveal another piece of the work that someone else will eventually come to accomplish.

What We Learned Today

Today we discovered that Passover was not the end of Israel’s deliverance story. God did not simply bring Israel out of Egypt and set them free to go their own way. At Sinai, God explained the destination of their rescue when He said that He had carried them on eagles’ wings and “brought you unto myself.” Israel was delivered from Pharaoh so that they could be brought into relationship with God.

That distinction helped us understand why blood appears again after Passover. In Egypt, blood was placed upon the doorway while death threatened the firstborn. At Sinai, that particular threat was already over. Israel had survived, crossed the sea, and escaped Pharaoh, yet animals were sacrificed and blood appeared again because something different was happening. God was establishing covenant with the people He had rescued.

We discovered that Exodus 24 does not describe just any sacrifices. Burnt offerings and peace offerings are specifically mentioned. The burnt offering becomes associated with complete dedication to God, while the peace offering becomes associated with fellowship and sacred eating. We cannot force all of the later Levitical details backward into Exodus, but the combination is important because the Sinai ceremony ultimately leads to representatives of Israel eating and drinking before God.

We also examined the altar and twelve pillars. Exodus explicitly says that the twelve pillars correspond to Israel’s twelve tribes, while the altar belongs to the worship directed toward God. After these are established, Moses takes blood from the same sacrificial event and applies it first to the altar and later to the people. Exodus does not explain precisely why the blood is divided this way, so we resisted claiming that one half literally represents God and the other half represents Israel. What we can say is that the same sacrificed blood deliberately enters both sides of the covenant ceremony.

Then Moses finally gives that blood a name. After Israel hears God’s words and promises obedience, Moses applies the blood and declares, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” This was another major development in our investigation because Scripture itself tells us what the blood is doing here. This is not simply another Passover, and Exodus does not primarily call this sin-offering blood. It is covenant blood, connected with the relationship God has established with Israel “concerning all these words.”

That also showed us that blood does not replace obedience. Israel hears God’s words, agrees to them, receives the blood of the covenant, and becomes responsible for living according to that covenant. The blood does not mean their future behavior no longer matters. The golden calf will soon prove exactly the opposite. Covenant blood establishes a real relationship, but the people inside that relationship can still violate it.

Perhaps the most surprising discovery came after the blood ceremony. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend the mountain. Earlier, Israel had been warned about the danger of approaching God’s presence carelessly. Now these representatives of Israel behold God, Scripture specifically tells us that He does not lay His hand upon them, and they eat and drink before Him.

That means Exodus 24 does not end with death. Animals have died and blood has been applied, but the destination of the story is living people in God’s presence. We cannot say that Exodus explicitly tells us the blood itself granted their access, but we cannot ignore the sequence either. Covenant words are accepted, sacrifice occurs, blood ratifies the covenant, and what follows is approach and fellowship with God.

This also caused us to look backward at Passover differently. Passover included sacrifice, blood, and a meal. At Sinai we again encounter sacrifice, blood, and a meal, although their functions are different. At Passover, the people eat the animal’s flesh while its blood remains outside on the doorway. At Sinai, sacrificial blood establishes covenant and representatives of Israel afterward eat and drink before God. Flesh, blood, sacrifice, eating, life, and relationship are beginning to form a biblical vocabulary that will become increasingly important.

Then we looked forward to Jesus, and the connection became difficult to ignore because Jesus Himself uses the language of Sinai. Moses declares, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” At His final meal, Jesus takes the cup and declares, “This is my blood of the covenant.” The similarity is not merely that both passages happen to mention blood. Jesus takes the covenant language established through Moses and applies it to His own approaching death.

But Jesus changes the pattern in an extraordinary way. Moses is the mediator who handles another creature’s blood. Animals provide the sacrificed life, while Moses carries the blood between the altar and the covenant people. With Jesus, the mediator and the sacrificed life become the same person. Jesus does not point toward the blood of another sacrifice and call it covenant blood. He identifies the covenant blood as His own.

The meal also becomes more significant. At Sinai, covenant blood is followed by representatives of God’s people eating and drinking before Him. At Jesus’ final meal, covenant, blood, eating, and drinking occur together, and Jesus places Himself at the center. The bread is associated with His body and the cup with His blood. The covenant mediator, covenant sacrifice, covenant blood, and covenant meal begin converging upon Jesus.

We also uncovered a question that we deliberately left unanswered. Later Torah will forbid Israel from consuming blood because blood has a unique relationship with life. Yet Jesus will eventually speak of eating His flesh and drinking His blood and connect those actions with having life. We should not solve that mystery before reaching Leviticus 17, but we now know that when we get there, we need to place that command beside John 6 and investigate why Jesus uses language that would have been so shocking within Israel’s understanding of blood.

The answer to our larger question is therefore becoming more detailed. Blood has represented life, testified to death, appeared with covenant, accompanied substitution, marked deliverance from destruction, and now explicitly ratifies relationship between God and His people. After the blood of the covenant, the story moves toward people alive in God’s presence. The pattern does not appear to be moving toward death as God’s ultimate objective. It keeps moving through death toward life and fellowship.

This may be the most important thing we learned today. God brought Israel out because He wanted to bring Israel near. The sacrifices were not the destination, and the blood was not the destination. Fellowship with God was where the covenant ceremony ultimately led, and centuries later Jesus would establish another covenant meal and identify its covenant blood as His own.

But there is now a serious problem waiting for us. Israel has promised obedience, received the blood of the covenant, and been represented before God at the covenant meal, yet almost immediately the people will turn to the golden calf. The blood established covenant, but it did not cure the rebellious human heart.

That failure may be exactly what the next stage of our investigation needs to expose. If people who have received the blood of the covenant can still sin, then covenant blood and forgiveness of future sin cannot simply be the same thing. We now have to discover what God does when the people He has brought near turn away from Him, and why Moses will respond by making the extraordinary offer to give himself for them.

Questions for the Next Episode

We ended today’s investigation with Israel in one of the highest moments of the entire Exodus story. God had delivered them from Egypt, brought them to Himself, spoken His covenant words, received their promise of obedience, and established the covenant through sacrificed blood. Representatives of Israel had even ascended the mountain, encountered God without being destroyed, and eaten and drunk in His presence. Everything seemed to be moving toward the relationship God intended when He said, “I brought you unto myself.”

Then everything falls apart. While Moses remains on the mountain, Israel makes the golden calf. The same people who had just declared, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient,” violate the covenant almost immediately. That creates a question we cannot avoid: what did the blood of the covenant actually accomplish if people covered by that covenant blood could still rebel against God?

This may force us to make another distinction in our investigation. Covenant blood established Israel’s relationship with God, but did it automatically atone for every sin Israel would commit afterward? Exodus 32 certainly does not read that way. God treats the rebellion as real guilt, judgment follows, and Moses must intercede for the people. Whatever happened with the blood in Exodus 24, Israel still needs an answer for sin committed inside the covenant.

Then Moses does something extraordinary. In Exodus 32:30, he tells Israel, “Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.” That word should immediately catch our attention because our entire investigation has been moving toward the biblical meaning of atonement. Moses now recognizes that covenant violation has created a problem requiring something beyond the covenant ceremony they have already experienced.

What does Moses mean when he says, “I shall make an atonement for your sin”? At this point he does not immediately bring another animal. Instead, he goes before God and confesses what Israel has done. Then he makes one of the most astonishing offers in the Old Testament: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.”

Why does Moses offer himself? Is he attempting to place his own life between guilty Israel and God’s judgment? Is this another development of substitution, or is Moses simply expressing his willingness to share Israel’s fate? Most importantly, why does God refuse to accept Moses’ offer in the way Moses presents it?

God answers, “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.” That response may be extremely important. Moses is willing to give himself for others, but God immediately returns responsibility to the person who sinned. If Moses is attempting some form of substitution, his offer does not solve Israel’s problem.

That raises a question that could take us directly toward Jesus without forcing Jesus into the passage. Why can the ram die instead of Isaac, while Moses apparently cannot simply offer himself in place of guilty Israel? Is there a difference between an animal substituting within a God-appointed sacrifice and a sinful human being attempting to bear another sinful person’s guilt?

We also need to investigate Moses himself. Moses is not sinless. Scripture has already shown his failures, and later events will show more. Could a person who himself stands accountable before God ever become the final answer for somebody else’s sin? Perhaps the problem is not Moses’ willingness. Perhaps the problem is what kind of substitute would actually be required.

This could become another moment where the Old Testament shows us the work before revealing the worker. Moses stands between God and guilty people. He intercedes for them. He asks for their forgiveness. He is even willing to surrender himself for them. Yet he cannot finally accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Centuries later, the New Testament will describe another mediator who intercedes for sinners and gives Himself for them.

Before making that comparison, however, we need to understand what Exodus itself is teaching. The golden calf may be the first major demonstration that entering covenant does not eliminate the problem of sin. Israel has God’s words, Israel has promised obedience, Israel has received covenant blood, and Israel has experienced fellowship with God, yet the human heart still turns toward an idol.

That may also begin explaining why the biblical story needs more than one blood ceremony. If the blood of Exodus 24 had permanently resolved every problem between Israel and God, we might expect the blood story to end there. Instead, the Torah is about to introduce an entire sacrificial system involving repeated offerings, priests, altars, purification, forgiveness, and eventually the Day of Atonement.

Why are repeated sacrifices necessary after the “blood of the covenant” has already been applied? Why will priests continually handle blood? Why will some blood remain at the altar while other blood enters increasingly sacred spaces? Why does Israel need continuing atonement if covenant blood has already established their relationship with God?

We should also watch the word “atonement” very carefully from this point forward. Until now, we have deliberately refused to call every blood event atonement. Passover was explicitly about deliverance from destruction, while Sinai explicitly called the blood covenant blood. Exodus 32 now brings the problem of sin and Moses’ desire to “make an atonement” into direct contact with the covenant story.

This may finally be the bridge into the sacrificial system we have been looking for. Blood has already taught us about life, accountability, substitution, deliverance, covenant, and fellowship. Now covenant-breaking sin forces the question of how guilty people can remain in relationship with a holy God.

There is also another question beneath the golden calf that we should not overlook. If the destination of the Sinai covenant was fellowship with God, then sin does more than break a rule. Sin damages the relationship that the covenant established. The people who had been brought near are now in danger of separation from the God who brought them near.

That may eventually help us understand atonement differently. Perhaps atonement is not merely about satisfying a penalty on a heavenly accounting sheet. Perhaps it is also about dealing with whatever prevents sinful human beings from remaining in the presence of God. We should not answer that yet, because Leviticus needs to tell us what atonement does before we define it for ourselves.

The next episode therefore begins with a terrible contrast. At the end of Exodus 24, representatives of Israel are eating and drinking before God. By Exodus 32, Israel is worshiping a golden calf. Covenant fellowship has been followed almost immediately by covenant rebellion, and Moses finds himself standing between God’s judgment and guilty people.

Then Moses says something we cannot possibly skip in an investigation called Why Did God Choose Blood. He essentially asks whether he can give himself for them, and God does not accept his offer as the solution.

The question for Part 9 therefore becomes much larger than the golden calf itself. Why couldn’t Moses take Israel’s place, and what does his failed offer teach us about the kind of mediator humanity actually needs? If the Old Testament has been showing us the work of Jesus before giving us His name, Moses may be about to show us something equally important: not only what the coming mediator must do, but why even Israel’s greatest mediator could not do it himself.

Evidence & Scripture

Exodus 12:1–13 provides the immediate background for everything that happens at Sinai. At Passover, an animal is killed, its blood is placed upon the doorway, and God calls the blood a sign. The blood is associated with preservation from the destruction coming upon Egypt, establishing a function that must be distinguished from the covenant blood that appears later at Sinai.

Exodus 12:21–27 reinforces that Passover combines sacrifice, blood, and a meal. Israel kills the Passover animal, applies its blood to the doorway, remains inside, and remembers the event as “the sacrifice of the LORD’S passover.” This becomes important when comparing Passover with Sinai because both events contain sacrificed life, blood, and eating, although the blood performs different functions.

Exodus 19:3–6 establishes the purpose behind Israel’s deliverance. God reminds Israel that He carried them “on eagles’ wings” and “brought you unto myself.” He then proposes the covenant relationship in which Israel will become His treasured possession, “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” The movement of Exodus is therefore not merely deliverance from Egypt but deliverance into relationship with God.

Exodus 19:7–8 records Israel’s initial acceptance of the covenant proposal. After Moses communicates God’s words, the people answer together, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do.” This promise becomes especially significant because Israel repeats it during the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 and then violates the covenant through the golden calf.

Exodus 19:10–25 establishes the danger associated with approaching God’s presence. Boundaries are placed around Sinai, and Israel is warned not to break through to gaze upon the LORD. This provides essential background for Exodus 24, where representatives of Israel later ascend toward God after the covenant has been ratified.

Exodus 20–23 contains the covenant material communicated to Israel before the blood ceremony. These chapters demonstrate that the covenant concerns far more than religious ritual. Worship, justice, violence, property, servants, strangers, widows, the poor, Sabbath, festivals, and Israel’s exclusive loyalty to God are all brought within the covenant relationship.

Exodus 24:3 records another declaration of obedience from Israel. Moses communicates “all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments,” and the people answer, “All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.” The covenant blood that follows therefore does not replace obedience but ratifies a relationship whose terms Israel has heard and accepted.

Exodus 24:4 introduces the physical architecture of the covenant ceremony. Moses writes God’s words, builds an altar beneath the mountain, and erects twelve pillars “according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” The twelve pillars explicitly correspond to Israel, while the altar belongs to the sacrificial worship directed toward God.

Exodus 24:5 identifies the sacrifices used during covenant ratification. Young men offer burnt offerings and sacrifice peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. The text does not call these sin offerings, which supports the distinction between covenant-ratifying blood in Exodus 24 and the later blood rituals specifically associated with purification and atonement.

Leviticus 1:3–17 later provides detailed regulations for burnt offerings. The offering is consumed upon the altar, helping explain why burnt offerings become associated with complete presentation to God. These later regulations can illuminate the sacrificial category present in Exodus 24 without assuming every later procedural detail was already operating identically at Sinai.

Leviticus 3:1–17 later describes peace or well-being offerings, while Leviticus 7:11–21 develops their connection with eating. This becomes relevant to Exodus 24 because peace offerings are sacrificed before Moses and Israel’s elders later eat and drink before God. Exodus itself does not explicitly say that the elders ate meat from those particular sacrifices, so the connection should remain a reasonable possibility rather than a stated fact.

Genesis 15:7–18 provides an earlier biblical example of sacrificed animals appearing during covenant establishment. Abraham divides animals, and the divine manifestation passes between the pieces. Blood is not emphasized there as it is in Exodus 24, but covenant and surrendered animal life are already connected before Sinai.

Genesis 31:43–54 provides another useful covenant comparison. Jacob and Laban establish a covenant, erect a memorial structure, offer sacrifice, and eat together. This demonstrates that sacrifice, covenant, and shared eating can exist within the same biblical covenant setting.

Genesis 26:26–31 likewise places a feast alongside oath-making and reconciliation between Isaac and Abimelech. Although the circumstances differ from Sinai, the passage helps establish that shared meals can accompany peace, agreement, and restored relationships within the biblical world.

Jeremiah 34:18–20 provides an important later example of the life-and-death seriousness of covenant. People cut a calf in two and pass between its pieces when entering covenant, and God later invokes that ceremony when condemning their covenant violation. This supports the possibility that slaughtered animals can communicate the seriousness and consequences of covenant commitment, although Exodus 24 itself never explicitly explains its sacrifices in those terms.

Exodus 24:6 is central to the blood investigation. Moses takes half of the sacrificial blood and places it in basins while the other half is dashed against the altar. Exodus does not explain why the blood is divided, so interpretations claiming that one half specifically represents God and the other Israel should be presented as interpretation rather than explicit biblical explanation.

Exodus 24:7 records Moses reading the Book of the Covenant to Israel after the sacrifices have occurred. The people again respond, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” The repeated acceptance of God’s words immediately before the blood reaches the people strengthens the connection between covenant blood and covenant obligation.

Exodus 24:8 contains the central declaration of Part 8. Moses takes the blood, applies it to the people, and says, “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.” Scripture therefore explicitly identifies the blood’s immediate function as covenantal rather than leaving us to guess why it is being used.

The Hebrew phrase behind “blood of the covenant” is dam habberit. The expression directly joins blood with berit, covenant. This phrase becomes especially important when Jesus later uses closely corresponding covenant-blood language during His final meal.

Exodus 24:9–11 records what happens immediately after covenant ratification. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend and “saw the God of Israel.” Scripture then emphasizes that God “laid not his hand” upon them and concludes, “also they saw God, and did eat and drink.”

Exodus 19:21 and Exodus 24:9–11 should therefore be examined together. Earlier, breaking through toward God’s presence carried the threat of death. After the covenant ceremony, selected representatives ascend, behold God, survive, and eat and drink. The narrative sequence is significant, although Exodus does not explicitly state that the applied blood itself granted their access.

The covenant meal should likewise be described carefully. Exodus 24 clearly states that the elders ate and drank before God, but it does not identify the food or explicitly say that they consumed meat from the peace offerings of Exodus 24:5. The interpretation of the scene as a covenant fellowship meal is strongly compatible with the surrounding context, but the distinction between textual statement and inference should remain clear.

Genesis 9:4 provides earlier background for the connection between blood and life by prohibiting eating flesh “with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof.” This means the relationship between life and blood already exists in Scripture before Sinai, even though Leviticus will later give the relationship its fullest sacrificial explanation.

Leviticus 17:10–14 will eventually become one of the most important passages in the entire series. It prohibits consuming blood and explains that “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” This passage should be marked for a later episode rather than completely interpreted in Part 8 because it will allow us to investigate the relationship between blood, life, atonement, and Jesus’ later language about drinking His blood.

Deuteronomy 12:23 reinforces the same principle with the statement, “the blood is the life.” Israel may eat meat, but blood is treated differently because of its association with life. This later Torah statement strengthens the life-blood connection we have been tracing from Genesis onward.

Matthew 26:26–28 records Jesus establishing the bread-and-cup tradition during His final meal. Jesus identifies the bread with His body and the cup with “my blood of the new testament,” or covenant, “which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Matthew therefore connects Jesus’ blood not only with covenant but explicitly with forgiveness.

Mark 14:22–24 provides the closest verbal connection with Exodus 24. Jesus gives bread to His disciples and then says over the cup, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.” The expression “blood of the covenant” strongly recalls Moses’ declaration in Exodus 24:8.

Luke 22:19–20 expresses the relationship slightly differently. Jesus identifies the bread with His body “which is given for you” and describes the cup as “the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” The covenant is now explicitly connected with Jesus’ own surrendered life rather than the blood of sacrificed animals.

First Corinthians 11:23–26 preserves Paul’s early Christian tradition concerning the same meal. Jesus says, “This cup is the new testament in my blood,” and His followers are instructed to continue the meal in remembrance of Him. Covenant, blood, eating, drinking, remembrance, and Jesus’ death therefore remain joined in early Christian practice.

Hebrews 9:15 identifies Jesus as “the mediator of the new testament,” or new covenant. This becomes particularly important when compared with Moses because Moses serves as mediator at Sinai while handling the blood of sacrificed animals. Jesus is presented as mediator of the new covenant while His own death provides the sacrificial basis of that covenant.

Hebrews 9:18–22 explicitly looks backward toward the inauguration of the first covenant with blood and recalls Moses’ covenant ceremony. Hebrews therefore gives us direct New Testament evidence that the Sinai blood ceremony belongs to the theological background for understanding Christ and the new covenant.

Hebrews 9 should nevertheless be handled carefully because its description appears to draw together details found across several Torah rituals rather than merely repeating Exodus 24 word for word. The theological connection between Moses’ covenant blood and Christ is explicit, but individual ritual details should still be checked against their original Torah passages.

John 6:51–58 should be marked for later investigation because Jesus repeatedly speaks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood in connection with eternal life. Against the Torah’s prohibition against consuming blood and its explanation that blood represents life, Jesus’ choice of language becomes extraordinarily significant.

John 6 should not yet be used to settle later Christian disputes concerning Communion. Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and other Christian traditions interpret the relationship between John 6 and the Eucharist differently. For this investigation, the essential evidence is that Jesus deliberately brings together flesh, blood, eating, drinking, and life in language that would have been striking within a Torah-shaped understanding of blood.

Exodus 32:1–6 provides the devastating contrast that follows the covenant ceremony. While Moses remains on the mountain, Israel constructs the golden calf and worships it. The people who have just promised obedience and received covenant blood therefore demonstrate almost immediately that covenant membership does not make human rebellion impossible.

Exodus 32:19–28 records the seriousness of the covenant violation. Moses destroys the tablets, the calf is destroyed, and judgment follows within Israel. These events demonstrate that receiving the blood of the covenant did not make subsequent covenant-breaking behavior irrelevant.

Exodus 32:30 introduces the next major development in our investigation when Moses tells Israel, “Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.” Covenant violation has now created a problem that Moses himself describes using atonement language.

Exodus 32:31–32 records Moses’ extraordinary intercession. He confesses Israel’s sin and asks God to forgive them, adding that if God will not do so, Moses asks to be blotted from the book God has written. Moses appears willing to place himself alongside the guilty people rather than abandon them to judgment.

Exodus 32:33 records God’s response: “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.” Whatever Moses intended by his offer, God does not simply transfer Israel’s guilt to Moses and accept Moses’ removal as the final solution.

The evidence through Exodus 24 therefore gives us another major stage in the developing blood theology of Scripture. Passover associated sacrificed blood with deliverance from destruction, while Sinai explicitly identifies sacrificed blood with covenant. The covenant ceremony then moves beyond blood toward representatives of Israel alive in God’s presence, eating and drinking before Him.

The New Testament later takes these established categories and concentrates them around Jesus. Moses handles another creature’s blood as mediator of the Sinai covenant, while Jesus identifies His own blood with the new covenant. Sinai contains covenant sacrifice, covenant blood, mediation, and a meal, while the Last Supper brings covenant, sacrifice, mediator, body, blood, eating, and drinking together around Jesus Himself.

The next biblical development will test what covenant blood did not accomplish. Israel can receive covenant blood and still rebel, which means the problem of sin remains. Moses will attempt to intercede and even offer himself for the guilty people, forcing our investigation toward a new question: why can Israel’s mediator plead for sinners but not simply take their place and solve the problem permanently?

Bibliography

• Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.
• Childs, Brevard S. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974.
• Durham, John I. Exodus. Word Biblical Commentary 3. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987.
• Gane, Roy E. Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.
• Hamilton, Victor P. Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.
• Janzen, David. The Social Meanings of Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: A Study of Four Writings. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 344. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004.
• Klawans, Jonathan. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Levine, Baruch A. In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill, 1974.
• Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 3. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
• Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 17–22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 3A. New York: Doubleday, 2000.
• Moberly, R. W. L. At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus 32–34. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 22. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983.
• Nicholson, Ernest W. God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
• Propp, William H. C. Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 2A. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
• Sarna, Nahum M. Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991.
• Wenham, Gordon J. The Book of Leviticus. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979.
• Williamson, Paul R. Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose. New Studies in Biblical Theology 23. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.
• Wright, David P. The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 101. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987.
• The Holy Bible, King James Version. Exodus 12; 19–24; 32; Leviticus 1; 3; 7; 17; Genesis 9; 15; 26; 31; Jeremiah 31; 34; Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 6; 1 Corinthians 11; Hebrews 9; 1 Peter 2.

Endnotes

1. Exodus 19:4 provides the theological bridge between Passover and Sinai. God describes the Exodus not merely as removing Israel from Egypt but as bringing Israel to Himself: “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” This language supports understanding deliverance as movement toward covenant relationship rather than freedom as an end in itself.
2. Exodus 19:5–6 identifies the relationship God intends to establish with the rescued nation. Israel is called God’s “peculiar treasure,” a “kingdom of priests,” and a “holy nation.” First Peter 2:9 later draws upon this language when describing the identity of the people belonging to Christ.
3. Exodus 19:7–8 records Israel’s first collective acceptance of God’s covenant proposal at Sinai. Their declaration, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do,” anticipates the similar declarations in Exodus 24:3 and 24:7 and makes the golden-calf rebellion especially striking.
4. Exodus 19:10–25 establishes boundaries around Sinai and warns Israel against unauthorized approach to God’s presence. This provides an important contrast with Exodus 24:9–11, where Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend and encounter God without being destroyed.
5. Exodus 24:4 describes Moses building an altar and twelve pillars corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. The text explicitly identifies the pillars with Israel but does not explicitly say that the altar symbolically represents God. Interpretations describing the altar and pillars as the two covenant parties should therefore be presented as interpretation rather than direct explanation from Exodus.
6. Exodus 24:5 identifies the sacrifices as burnt offerings and peace offerings. Later descriptions of burnt offerings appear in Leviticus 1, while Leviticus 3 and 7 provide fuller descriptions of peace or well-being offerings. These later passages help illuminate the sacrificial categories without proving that every later ritual detail was already practiced identically in Exodus 24.
7. Peace offerings are particularly relevant because portions of these sacrifices could be eaten in a sacred meal. This creates a possible relationship between the peace offerings of Exodus 24:5 and the eating and drinking of Exodus 24:11. Exodus itself, however, never identifies what the elders ate, so the connection should remain a plausible interpretation rather than a stated fact.
8. Genesis 15:7–18 provides an earlier example of sacrificed animals appearing within covenant establishment. Abraham divides animals, after which the divine manifestation passes between the pieces. The passage does not emphasize blood as Exodus 24 does, but it demonstrates that sacrificed life and covenant were associated before Sinai.
9. The common Hebrew expression for making a covenant, karat berit, literally contains the verb “cut.” This language has often been connected with covenant ceremonies involving slaughtered animals. Jeremiah 34:18–20 provides especially strong biblical evidence for such imagery because covenant participants pass between pieces of a calf, and their later covenant violation is judged in relation to that ceremony.
10. Exodus 24:6 states that Moses divided the sacrificial blood, placing half in basins and applying half to the altar. The text does not explicitly explain the meaning of this division. The interpretation that the same blood ritually joins the divine and human sides of the covenant is reasonable, but claims that each half has a precisely stated symbolic meaning go beyond what Exodus directly tells us.
11. Some interpretations of Exodus 24 understand the shared blood ceremony in terms of covenant kinship or a new bond between God and Israel. This interpretation fits the broader relational language surrounding Israel’s covenant identity, but Exodus does not explicitly describe Israel as becoming God’s literal “blood relatives.” The language should therefore be used cautiously.
12. Exodus 24:7 is essential because Moses reads the Book of the Covenant before applying the remaining blood. Israel responds, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Blood therefore does not replace covenant obligation; it ratifies a relationship whose words have already been heard and accepted.
13. Exodus 24:8 contains the defining statement of the episode: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.” The Hebrew expression dam habberit joins “blood” directly with “covenant,” establishing a biblical category later echoed in the New Testament.
14. The blood of Exodus 24 should not automatically be identified with the blood of a later sin or purification offering. Exodus 24:5 identifies burnt offerings and peace offerings, while Moses explicitly calls their blood “the blood of the covenant.” Later biblical writers can develop additional theological implications, but the immediate function in Exodus is covenant ratification.
15. Exodus 24:9–11 records the extraordinary conclusion of the ceremony. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend, behold the God of Israel, are not struck down, and eat and drink. The explicit statement that God “laid not his hand” upon them emphasizes that they survive an encounter with the divine presence.
16. The sequence between Exodus 19 and Exodus 24 deserves careful attention. Exodus 19 emphasizes boundaries and the danger of unauthorized approach, while Exodus 24 concludes with selected representatives approaching God after covenant ratification. Scripture does not explicitly say that the blood itself granted this access, but the narrative placement makes the progression significant.
17. Genesis 31:43–54 provides useful background for understanding covenant meals. Jacob and Laban establish a covenant, erect a memorial, sacrifice, and eat together. Genesis 26:26–31 likewise associates feasting with oath-making and peace between Isaac and Abimelech, demonstrating that shared eating could accompany solemn relational agreements.
18. Passover also combined sacrifice, blood, and eating. Exodus 12 describes the Passover animal being killed, its blood being placed upon the doorway, and its flesh being eaten by the household. The blood itself was not consumed, establishing a distinction between flesh and blood that becomes increasingly important later in Torah.
19. Genesis 9:4 had already connected blood with life by prohibiting flesh “with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof.” Leviticus 17:10–14 later develops this relationship explicitly, declaring that “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Deuteronomy 12:23 similarly states that “the blood is the life.”
20. The prohibition against consuming blood should be preserved for fuller investigation when the series reaches Leviticus 17. It becomes especially important when compared with John 6:53–56, where Jesus speaks of eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking His blood in order to possess life.
21. John 6 should be approached without prematurely resolving later denominational disagreements about the Eucharist. Christian traditions differ regarding whether the passage refers directly to sacramental Communion, spiritual participation in Christ, faith in Christ, or overlapping meanings. For the present investigation, the significant observation is Jesus’ deliberate combination of flesh, blood, eating, drinking, and life.
22. Mark 14:24 provides a particularly strong verbal connection between Jesus’ Last Supper and Exodus 24. Moses declares, “Behold the blood of the covenant,” while Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant,” depending upon translation. Matthew 26:28, Luke 22:20, and 1 Corinthians 11:25 preserve closely related covenant-blood traditions.
23. The comparison reveals an important development. Moses mediates the Sinai covenant while handling blood belonging to sacrificed animals. Jesus identifies the blood of the new covenant as His own. In Christian interpretation, mediator and sacrificial life therefore converge in Jesus in a way they do not converge in Moses.
24. Hebrews 9:15 identifies Jesus as mediator of the new covenant, while Hebrews 9:18–22 looks backward toward Moses and the inauguration of the first covenant with blood. Hebrews therefore provides explicit New Testament justification for interpreting Christ’s work against the background of Sinai covenant blood.
25. Hebrews 9 does not simply reproduce Exodus 24 word for word. Its description includes ritual details associated with other Torah passages, apparently drawing together broader Mosaic blood rituals for theological purposes. The connection between Christ and the Mosaic covenant is explicit, while individual ritual details should still be checked against their original passages.
26. Jeremiah 31:31–34 becomes important when the limitations of the Sinai covenant become apparent. Jeremiah promises a “new covenant” unlike the covenant made when Israel came out of Egypt and describes God placing His law within His people and writing it upon their hearts. This provides important background for Jesus’ later declaration concerning the new covenant in His blood.
27. Exodus 32 demonstrates that covenant blood did not make Israel incapable of rebellion. Shortly after promising obedience and receiving the blood of the covenant, Israel worships the golden calf. The narrative therefore prevents interpreting covenant blood as permission to disregard subsequent obedience or as an automatic cancellation of every future covenant violation.
28. Exodus 32:30 introduces atonement language directly after the golden-calf rebellion. Moses tells Israel, “Ye have sinned a great sin,” and announces that he will return to God in the hope that he might “make an atonement” for their sin. This marks an important transition from covenant ratification toward the problem of sin committed within the covenant.
29. Exodus 32:31–32 records Moses’ extraordinary intercession. Moses confesses Israel’s sin and asks God to forgive them, adding that if forgiveness cannot be granted, he asks to be blotted from God’s book. His willingness to identify himself with guilty Israel creates an important biblical picture of mediation and intercession.
30. Exodus 32:33 records God’s response that the one who sins against Him will be blotted from His book. The passage does not explicitly explain Moses’ offer as a rejected substitutionary sacrifice, so that interpretation should be approached cautiously. What is clear is that Moses’ willingness to give himself does not simply remove Israel’s guilt.
31. The progression through Exodus therefore adds another stage to the developing biblical theology of blood. Passover connects sacrificed blood with deliverance from destruction, while Sinai explicitly connects sacrificed blood with covenant. After covenant ratification, representatives of Israel enter God’s presence and eat and drink, placing fellowship rather than death at the end of the ceremony.
32. The connection with Jesus becomes increasingly significant because the New Testament brings these categories together around Him. Covenant, mediator, sacrifice, body, blood, eating, drinking, forgiveness, and life eventually converge in the New Testament’s description of Christ. The Old Testament passages do not name Jesus directly, but Christian Scripture later interprets His work through categories those earlier passages established.
33. The evidence through Part 8 therefore does not yet allow us to reduce the answer to “God chose blood because sin requires death.” The biblical picture developing so far is broader. Blood is repeatedly connected with life surrendered, life preserved, covenant relationship, and ultimately fellowship with God, leaving the later sacrificial system and the work of Christ to explain how these themes finally come together.

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