Exodus 24-26

Exodus 24 is the conclusion of the Covenant. Moses goes back down the mountain, writes down everything God said, and tells the people all the laws that God spoke to him. They reaffirm their agreement to the Covenant. There still are a lot more rules and regulations to come, but at least they have an overall sense of what makes God different from the Egyptians gods. Prior to this, all they know about God was that God performed 10 plagues on Egypt, split the Red Sea, and brought them a very long walk through the wilderness.

Moses builds the altar that was mentioned before and the people. They perform sacrifice and Moses reads the "Book of the Covenant" to the people and they again affirm their agreement.

Moses takes some of the sacrificial blood and sprinkles it on the people and says this is the blood of the Covenant. What is not stated is whether he did this on a few people, selective representatives, or the entire multitude.

God calls Moses back up the mountain with the leading elders. We also see that Joshua is his aid and goes up with him. This shows that Moses might be grooming Joshua to succeed Moses, but also that Joshua is taking over some of the privilege that Aaron had.

The elders and Joshua hold back from going all the way up and are to manage the disputes of the group. Moses goes up alone, close to the giant cloud presence of God. After 6 days, God calls Moses to enter the cloud where he stays for 40 days.

What's he doing there for 40 days? God has a lot more details to go over.

Exodus 25 covers more details about offerings, the ark of the Covenant, a ceremonial table and a lamp stand. I believe each of these are still used after the construction of the temple. In contrast, Exodus 26 has details on the construction of the tabernacle, which I believe is later replaced by the temple.

A lot of the items require pure gold and acacia wood. The ark will house the 10 commandments as well as a place for God to dwell. It also is to have gold cherubim on its lid. I'm not sure of the reason for this, but it is somewhat shocking since it comes from a God who hates idols. My guess is that they are replicating a heavenly throne and the cherubim represent angels before God's throne in the heavens.

The lamp stand holds 7 lamps and it reminds me of the 7 lamps for the 7 churches at the beginning of Revelations.