Day 107—Covenant and Confirmation
When Blood Makes It Official and a Mediator Goes Where We Cannot
However you can engage today, we’re here. Read, listen or both.
The written portion gives an overview, with verses broken down into smaller bites, and journaling/prayer prompts for reflection. In the podcast, Steve Traylor reflects on today’s passage with Scripture reading, a deeper pastoral teaching, and prayer (about 15 minutes). Perfect for morning coffee, commutes, or when your eyes need a rest.
📖 Resources: Printable Bible Book Guides (Genesis & Job) · Hard Questions, Honest Answers
We’ve written three articles That go further into the questions Exodus raises—for those who want more. We will leave them here throughout the Exodus studies:
When the God of Love Sends Plagues — How do we reconcile the harshness of the plagues with a God of lovingkindness? A companion to Days 88–93.
What Is a Miracle? — What miracles actually are in Scripture, why they cluster rather than continue, and what that means when God seems quiet. A companion to Day 95.
Not the Same God — Why the worship God prescribed in Exodus is structurally different from every other sacrificial religion in the ancient world. A companion to Days 101–124.
Exodus 24:1-18
Settle in for a moment before you read.
For the last several days you have been walking through law—page after page of ordinances governing oxen, pledges, festivals, and fair witness. It may have felt remote. Hang on. Because Exodus 24 is where the covenant stops being proposed and starts being sealed—and where one man goes up into the fire while the rest are not permitted.
Moses has received the terms of God’s covenant with Israel. The people have heard them. Now comes formal ratification—and in the ancient world, covenants were not sealed with a handshake. They were sealed with blood.
But ceremony is only part of what happens here. Seventy elders of Israel are permitted to see God—not fully, but enough. They eat and drink in His presence. And then Moses goes past where even they can follow, into the cloud, into the consuming fire, for forty days and forty nights.
Today we see: that the covenant God makes with His people is sealed by blood, ratified by sacrifice, and approached only through a mediator—and that the access the elders received was never earned by their promises, but granted by the God who chose to let them come near.
1. Summoned and Separated
Exodus 24:1-2
He said to Moses, “Come up to Yahweh, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship from a distance. 2 Moses alone shall come near to Yahweh, but they shall not come near. The people shall not go up with him.”
The chapter opens with a summons that immediately establishes distance.
God invites Moses, Aaron, his two sons (Nadab and Abihu), and seventy elders to ascend the mountain. But He draws a line: Moses alone comes near. The others worship from afar. The people do not come up at all. There are concentric rings of access here, and Moses stands inside all of them—the only one who passes through every boundary.
This is not favoritism. It is theological structure. The holiness of God creates distance; the mercy of God builds a way through—but always through a mediator. Moses is not the goal. Moses is the pattern. Every time Scripture shows us a mediator standing between the holy God and His people—standing in the gap, going where others cannot—it is building toward the One who is the sole and final Mediator: Jesus Christ. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5)
If you have felt today like God is distant—unreachable, hidden behind a silence you cannot penetrate—this passage tells you: the way through has always required someone willing to go on behalf of others. That Mediator has already gone. He has not sent you to ascend alone.
Journaling/Prayer: Where do you feel the distance between you and God most acutely right now—in prayer, in silence, in circumstances that seem to contradict His care?
You do not have to resolve that distance today. But notice: Israel was not expected to climb to the top. Most of them stayed at the base. God came to them anyway, through the one who went ahead. Bring that distance to God as honestly as you can. If the words are not there, bring only your awareness that the gap exists.
2. Promise and Preparation
Exodus 24:3-8
3 Moses came and told the people all Yahweh’s words, and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, “All the words which Yahweh has spoken will we do.”
4 Moses wrote all Yahweh’s words, then rose up early in the morning and built an altar at the base of the mountain, with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 He sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of cattle to Yahweh. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, “We will do all that Yahweh has said, and be obedient.”
8 Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has made with you concerning all these words.”
This is one of the most precisely structured passages in Exodus—and one of the most quietly devastating.
The people hear the terms. They agree: “All the words which Yahweh has spoken, we will do.” Moses writes it down. Twelve pillars are set up—one for each tribe. Young men offer burnt offerings and peace offerings. Moses divides the blood: half sprinkled against the altar (marking it as the place of God’s presence in this covenant act), half held in basins. He reads the Book of the Covenant aloud. The people agree again. Moses takes the blood from the basins and sprinkles it on the people.
“Look, this is the blood of the covenant.”
Covenant was never made by agreement alone—it required blood, because blood is life, and the giving of blood says: I am bound to you to the point of death. The people’s pledge is sincere. And it is not enough. Within forty days they will have broken every term. The author of Hebrews is clear: the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. (Hebrews 10:4) The blood sprinkled on Israel at Sinai did not finally atone for anything. It pointed. It was a shadow cast backward from a cross.
When Jesus lifted the cup at the Last Supper and said, “This is the blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many” (Matthew 26:28), He was speaking to men who knew this scene. Every devout Jew around that table had grown up with the words of Exodus 24:8. He was saying: the thing Moses described—I am doing it. And this time, the blood is enough.
Journaling/Prayer: Have you made promises to God that you have not kept?
Many who have walked with God for any length of time carry the weight of commitments made in desperate moments that quietly unraveled—vows at the bedside, prayers bargained in the dark, resolutions that lasted a week. Israel said “we will do” twice, with full sincerity—and broke it in forty days. The covenant was not held together by their promise. It was held together by the blood. If you are living under the weight of promises broken, write one sentence today about what you actually need—not what you pledged to do, but what only God can provide. That is where the covenant meets you.
3. Glimpsed and Gathered
Exodus 24:9-11
9 Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up. 10 They saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was like a paved work of sapphire stone, like the skies for clearness. 11 He didn’t lay his hand on the nobles of the children of Israel. They saw God, and ate and drank.
Read these three verses slowly.
Seventy-four men climb a holy mountain and see God. Not an angel. Not a vision described in abstractions. The God of Israel. Under His feet: something like sapphire pavement, blue as open sky. And—the detail that stops every careful reader—He did not lay His hand on them. They lived. They were not consumed. They stood in the presence of the consuming fire, and the fire did not take them.
And then they ate and drank.
Something happened on that mountain that the text refuses to over-explain: these men entered the presence of the living God and experienced not terror but communion—a meal. The peace offering they had sacrificed below now bore fruit in a table spread at the foot of the divine throne. The sacrifice below enabled the feast above. That is still the pattern. The cross opens the door to communion with a God who, by all rights, should be inaccessible to creatures as broken as we are.
Notice what they actually saw: under His feet. Not His face. Not His fullness. The edge—the hem of something so vast that its floor was sapphire, its ceiling was sky. And it was enough to let them eat.
Journaling/Prayer: Has God given you a glimpse of Himself—in Scripture, in answered prayer, in a moment of unexpected clarity—that you have since almost forgotten?
The elders did not get the fullness of God. They got His footstool. But they ate and drank. They brought back what they had been given. What fragment of God’s reality have you been given that you can return to today—even if it feels like a footstool and not a throne room? If you cannot think of anything, tell Him that too. Ask for something small—not the consuming fire, just the sapphire pavement.
4. Called and Climbing
Exodus 24:12-14
12 Yahweh said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and stay here, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law and the commands that I have written, that you may teach them.”
13 Moses rose up with Joshua, his servant, and Moses went up onto God’s Mountain. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us, until we come again to you. Behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever is involved in a dispute can go to them.”
The elders retreat. Moses goes further.
Joshua accompanies him partway—Moses’ faithful servant, his preparation for leadership, his companion as far as he can follow. But Moses goes where Joshua cannot. God has called him alone to the summit: to receive the stone tablets, the inscribed law, the physical embodiment of the covenant. It cannot be transmitted by relay or committee. It requires the mediator’s personal presence before the Giver.
Before ascending, Moses makes provision for the people below. Aaron and Hur will judge disputes. The community will not be left without structure. Even in moments of extraordinary, solitary obedience, Moses carries the people with him in his care—he goes up, but they are not abandoned.
There is no spiritual ascent that God calls us toward that is meant to leave others destitute. The call upward and the responsibility outward are not in competition. Moses holds both. So did Jesus—who prayed all night and still rose to heal, who ascended to the Father and still sent the Spirit to remain.
Journaling/Prayer: Is there someone in your life who is holding down what needs holding while you are in a hard season of waiting or climbing—a spouse, a friend, a caregiver? And is there someone you are being asked to be that person for?
You may not be Moses today. You may be Aaron. You may be Hur. Sitting with people waiting at the foot of the mountain, settling their disputes quietly, holding steady until someone returns. That is not a lesser calling. That is a faithful one.
5. Cloud and Consuming Fire
Exodus 24:15-18
15 Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 Yahweh’s glory settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. The seventh day he called to Moses out of the middle of the cloud. 17 The appearance of Yahweh’s glory was like devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel. 18 Moses entered into the middle of the cloud, and went up on the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
The cloud covers the mountain and Moses waits.
Six days of silence. On the seventh day, God speaks from the cloud. Moses enters. The word the text uses for God’s glory appearing below is as consuming fire—devouring fire, the kind that leaves nothing unchanged. The people see it from below. Moses walks into it.
This is not recklessness. It is obedient trust. Moses has been summoned. He goes where the fire is, because God told him to come, and because someone has to.
Forty days and forty nights. The people below will not manage to wait. By the time Moses descends, the golden calf will already have been made by Aaron’s hands. This is not incidental—it is instructive. The mountain is silent from below. The people cannot see what is happening in the cloud. They have only the promise that Moses will return and the testimony of what they have already seen. It is not enough to hold them.
Seasons of apparent divine silence are not seasons of divine absence. The cloud that hides the fire does not extinguish it. Moses, inside the cloud, is not experiencing absence. He is in the most intense proximity to God he has ever known. What looks, from below, like a terrifying sky is, from inside, the glory of the living God.
If you are standing at the foot of a mountain right now—watching a cloud cover something you cannot see, waiting for a voice that has been silent longer than you can bear—this is not evidence that the fire has gone out. It may be evidence that the Mediator is still at work, inside what you cannot enter, on your behalf.
Journaling/Prayer: What are you waiting for that has gone silent? Not silent the way things go quiet before they end—but the silent of the cloud on the mountain, where something is happening but you cannot see it and you cannot go there.
You do not have to believe that the fire is still burning inside the cloud today. You only have to stay at the base of the mountain a little longer. Write one honest sentence about what waiting is costing you right now. And then one honest sentence about what it would mean to trust that the cloud is not empty.
Summary
Exodus 24 is a covenant ratification chapter, and like all ratification scenes it carries weight proportional to what is being bound. What is being bound here is not merely a legal arrangement between a nation and its God. It is the beginning of a framework that will take centuries to complete—and a meal that will echo all the way to an upper room in Jerusalem.
The people promised twice, sincerely, and kept their word for roughly forty days. That is not condemnation—that is the honest record of every human attempt to approach holiness on the strength of our own intentions. Exodus 24 does not hide Israel’s insufficiency. It builds it into the structure: the blood was never about their promise-keeping. The blood was about the one who would eventually ratify a better covenant with better blood (Hebrews 9:15).
Moses, alone at the summit, in the consuming fire, received what the people needed but could not retrieve for themselves. He went into what they could not enter. He stayed forty days in what appeared to them as devouring flame. And he came back carrying stone tablets—the law of God made portable, made holdable, made available to ordinary people who had stayed below.
The elders, sprinkled with blood, ate at the foot of the divine throne. They did not earn access. The access was given. That is the only kind of access that has ever existed to a holy God—not earned, but given. Not deserved, but extended. Not achieved by ascending, but granted by the One who descended.
Action / Attitude for Today
Let this passage reorient you to what it actually takes to approach God—and what has already been done so that you can.
If you have been trying to earn access to God through spiritual effort, through performance, through promising Him things you hope will hold—rest from that today. The covenant was not ratified by Israel’s pledge. It was ratified by blood. The better covenant is ratified by better blood, the blood of Christ, and nothing you can do will add to what He has already done to bring you near. Come near, then. Not because you are worthy, but because the Mediator went first.
If you are in the cloud season—waiting, unable to see what God is doing, watching a silence that has stretched longer than seems bearable—know that Moses did not see the golden calf from inside the cloud. He could not have. He was in the presence of God. What looked, from below, like divine abandonment was, from above, the most intimate work of preparation the nation would ever receive. You cannot always know what is happening inside what you cannot enter. Trust the Mediator who can.
If all of this is too much today—if the theology is heavy and the waiting is heavier and you have nothing left but the fact that you opened this page—take only the sapphire pavement. Under His feet was something like the sky itself. The elders saw the footstool and called it glory. They ate and drank in the presence of what they could not fully comprehend. You are not required to understand what you are walking through before God is present in it.
Say this prayer, as much of it as is true for you today: “Lord, I am not Moses. I cannot enter what You have entered on my behalf. I cannot climb to where You have gone. I can only remain at the base and trust that the cloud is not empty—that the fire is still burning—that the Mediator has already ascended on my behalf. Seal Your covenant to my heart today. Not with my promises, which I know will fail, but with the blood of the better covenant, which cannot. Let me receive what You have already given. Amen.”
You do not have to ascend alone. The Mediator has already gone ahead.
The Bible for the Broken is published by Aurion Press LLC. © Aurion Press LLC. All rights reserved.