blood-of-the-covenant

The Blood of the Covenant

Exodus Exodus 24:1-18

The Book of the Covenant has been read aloud; now it is cut in blood. Moses throws half the blood on the altar and half on the people and declares, 'Behold the blood of the covenant' — the one verse in the canon where the blood-dashing verb meets the word covenant. Seventy-four men then ascend, behold God with the prophetic-vision verb used of him nowhere else, and eat and drink under a pavement of sapphire. The glory settles as devouring fire; Moses enters the cloud for forty days. And the oath sworn at the foot of the mountain is broken at the foot of the same mountain within those forty days — which is why the blood that ratifies a covenant Israel cannot keep already points beyond itself to 'the blood of the eternal covenant.'