What Does Exodus 24:9 Mean?

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders ascend the mountain together for the covenant-ratification meal with YHWH. The convergence of the covenant community's full leadership at the divine presence, the prophet-mediator, the priests, the elders representing all twelve tribes, is the covenant ratification's most socially complete moment. The entire covenant community's leadership stands before YHWH simultaneously after the blood ceremony has established their covenant relationship. What the blood ceremony sealed legally, the ascent draws into personal encounter.

The seventy elders parallel the seventy-nations list of Genesis 10 and the seventy members of Jacob's house who descended to Egypt (Exodus 1:5): the number seven-times-ten represents complete totality in Israel's symbolic vocabulary. Seventy elders representing some form of total-Israel accompanies Moses into the divine presence.

Numbers 11:16-17 later assigns the same seventy-elder structure to the Spirit's distribution: YHWH takes the Spirit from Moses and distributes it to seventy elders to Bear the community's burden. The leadership body that sees YHWH at Sinai is the same body that will receive the Spirit's distribution in the wilderness.

Jesus' selection of twelve disciples (representing the twelve tribes of the new covenant community) and his inner circle of three (Peter, James, John: paralleling Moses, Aaron, Nadab-and-Abihu as the inner ascent group) deliberately mirrors the Sinai leadership structure. The transfiguration scene (Matthew 17:1-9) where Peter, James, and John see Jesus in divine glory with Moses and Elijah present is the new covenant's equivalent of the Sinai-elders meal: the covenant community's inner leadership witnesses the divine glory of their covenant mediator. Both scenes end with the instruction not to tell what they saw until the appointed time.