Exodus 24:1-2

"And he said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off: and Moses alone shall come near unto Jehovah; but they shall not come near; neither shall the people go up with him."

At some time prior to these instructions to Moses, he had returned to the people, with whom he had remained until this order upon a later occasion only a short time after the pronouncement by God Himself of the Decalogue in the hearing of all the people. These verses are the key to understanding that "Only Moses went to the fiery clouded summit."[4] Moses was a type of Christ in that exclusive privilege. "Moses alone as the mediator of the covenant (Galatians 3:19) was allowed to approach the Divine presence."[5] The specific persons mentioned here were the chosen representatives of the people, and they would ascend a little higher than the people who remained at the foot of the mountain. The fact that only those chosen persons, including the seventy elders, would witness the theophany is a type of the fact that Christ showed himself alive unto men following his resurrection, "Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God" (Acts 10:41).

The appearance of Nadab and Abihu in this list of the chosen representatives is the equivalent of a whole library contradicting the foolish notion of some critics that some "priesthood in the Babylonian era, circa 550 B.C." composed this portion of Exodus. Their appearance here proves that the evil for which they later died had not been, at this time, committed. This record was therefore written before the sons of Aaron died.

Huey mentioned a number of ways in which covenants were made in ancient times: (1) they ate salt together (Leviticus 2:13; Numbers 18:19); (2) they ate a sacrificial meal together (Genesis 31:54); (3) they exchanged articles of clothing (1 Samuel 18:1-4); (4) they walked between the divided pieces of slaughtered animals (Genesis 15:10,17).[6] However, it must not be thought that the covenant act here would necessarily have conformed to any one pattern.

TWO CEREMONIES; OR ONLY ONE?

The greatest misunderstanding of this chapter is in a failure to see that only one ceremony is involved throughout, namely, that of the blood-shedding and the sprinkling of the altar and of the representatives of the people. That act was the making and sealing of the covenant. The sacrificial meal afterward had the same status as the one between Jacob and Laban (Genesis 31:54) which came a day or two after the covenant had already been made. The efforts of critics to find a separate account of "the covenant" in that sacrificial meal recorded here are frustrated completely by this Biblical example. There was only one covenant made here, and only one ratification and sealing of it.