What Does Exodus 24:12 Mean?

YHWH calls Moses to ascend the mountain alone to receive the written materials: the stone tablets, the law, and the commandment, "that you may teach them." The stone tablets received at this moment of covenant ratification are the covenant's most durable artifact: the divine writing on divine material given by YHWH's own direct action. Moses is summoned alone because what he is about to receive is for transmission to the community rather than a community-encounter moment: the ratification meal was for the leaders; the written tablets and extended instruction are for the mediator who will teach the whole community.

The "that you may teach them" purpose clause for the written tablets is the covenant's pedagogical structure: the written documentation exists for the community's formation, rather than for archival preservation. The tablets are given so that Moses can teach, and the teaching is what the community needs to live the covenant they just ratified in blood. The covenant blood-seal creates the relationship; the covenant text-instruction forms the community for living within the relationship. Both are necessary; the blood without the instruction and the instruction without the blood are each insufficient for the covenant's purpose.

Deuteronomy 31:9-13 records Moses' instruction to write the law and read it publicly every seven years at the Feast of Booths, "that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God." The written tablets given to Moses on Sinai seed the entire subsequent tradition of covenant text-reading and teaching that becomes the Torah's educational institution. The synagogue's weekly Torah-reading, the Reformation's emphasis on scripture's public reading, and the new covenant community's teaching ministry all operate within the same logic: the written covenant text exists to teach the community for covenant living.