What Does Exodus 24:3 Mean?

And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people.

And they said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words." The blood-covenant ratification is the Sinai covenant's most sacred act: Moses takes the blood of the sacrificed animals and divides it between the altar (YHWH's representative table) and the people. Half the blood is thrown on the altar; the people hear the Book of the Covenant read and accept its obligations ("we will do, we will be obedient"); then Moses throws the other half of the blood on the people.

The blood-between-altar-and-people seals the covenant bilaterally: the covenant is not YHWH's unilateral commitment but the mutual bond of two parties sealed by the same blood. The blood-throwing is both a cleansing act (the covenant community is made ritually fit to enter the covenant relationship) and a binding act (the blood that seals the covenant between sacrificed life and the covenant God now marks the covenant people as bound by that same sacrificial blood).

The life-in-the-blood (Leviticus 17:14) shed at the altar and distributed to the people is the living symbol of the covenant's deepest structure: shared life between YHWH and Israel.

Jesus' words at the Last Supper: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Mark 14:24): deliberately echo Moses' "behold the blood of the covenant" at Sinai (Matthew 26:28 adds "for the forgiveness of sins").

The Sinai covenant's blood-ratification is the type of which Jesus' covenant blood is the fulfillment: Moses threw animal blood on the people as the Sinaitic covenant's seal; Jesus pours out his own blood as the new covenant's seal (Hebrews 9:18-20: "even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood... saying, 'This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you'"). The entire theology of atonement, covenant, and new covenant flows through the Sinai blood-of-the-covenant ratification.