What Does Exodus 24:6 Mean?

Moses takes half the blood from the ratification ceremony's sacrifices and puts it in basins; the other half he throws against the altar. The two-direction blood-application is the covenant's ritual expression of covenant mutuality: the altar represents YHWH's side of the covenant, and the people will receive the second half of the same blood. The sacrifice's blood, both parties together entering covenant through the same life-substance, is the ritual form of the covenant's binding reality. What blood unites in the ancient Near Eastern covenant ratification context, what is joined by blood cannot be broken without blood.

The basins catch the blood for the second application: the physical receptacles represent the covenant community's capacity to receive what the sacrifice has made available. Moses manages both sides of the ceremony, the altar-side and the people-side, because his role is precisely that: the mediator who stands between YHWH and Israel, receiving from YHWH and distributing to the people, taking from the people and presenting to YHWH. The blood-ceremony is the physical enactment of everything Moses' prophetic-priestly mediatorial office does throughout the wilderness period.

The covenant blood-ceremony's architectural similarity to the tabernacle's blood-sprinkling rituals (Leviticus 16's Day of Atonement; Exodus 29's priestly consecration) reveals the covenant's blood-theology as a unified system: blood applied to both YHWH's sanctuary and the community establishes and renews the covenant relationship. The Sinai ratification blood and the sanctuary's regular blood-application are the same theology at different scales: the once-for-all covenant establishment and the ongoing covenant maintenance. Hebrews 9:18-22 treats them as the same type, both fulfilled in the one blood of the new covenant.