When rescued Israel had reached Mount Sinai, and a new era for
the descendants of Abraham was entered upon, by the issue of the
divinely given charter of a separate nationality, the covenant of
blood-friendship between the Lord and the seed of the Lord’s friend,
was once more recognized and celebrated. “And Moses came and told the
people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the
people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord
hath spoken will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and
rose up early in the morning [or, ‘prepared for a new start’ as that
phrase means],[505] and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve
pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young
men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and
sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord;” not sin-offerings
are named, but burnt-offerings, of consecration, and peace-offerings,
of communion. And now observe the celebration of the symbolic rite
of the blood-covenant between the Lord and the Lord’s people, with
the substitute blood accepted on both sides, and with the covenant
record agreed upon. “And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in
basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took
the book [the record] of the covenant, and read in the audience of
the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath spoken will we do,
and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the
people [half of it he sprinkled on the Lord’s altar, and half of it
he sprinkled on the Lord’s people. The writer of Hebrews[506] says
that Moses sprinkled blood on the book, also; thus blood-staining the
record of the covenant, according to the custom in the East, to-day],
and [Moses] said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath
made with you concerning all these words [or, as the margin renders
it, ‘upon all these conditions,’ in the written compact]. Then went
up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel.... And they beheld God, and did eat and drink”;[507] as in
the social inter-communion, which commonly accompanies the rite of
blood-friendship.
When Abraham was brought into the covenant of blood-friendship with
Jehovah, it was his own blood which Abraham devoted to Jehovah. When
Jehovah recognized anew this covenant of blood-friendship in behalf
of the seed of his friend, Jehovah provided the substitute blood, for
its symbolizing in the passover. When united Israel was to be inducted
into the privileges of this covenant of blood-friendship at Mount
Sinai, half of the blood came from the one party, and half of the blood
came from the other party, to the sacred compact; both portions being
supplied from a common and a mutually accepted symbolic substitute.