ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #53 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Is there any significance in the fact that the people twice repeat the oath to obey everything that God has told them to do. Once in Verse 3 and once in Verse 7? >> Very good, Josh. Excellent observation. We've already commented upon the close relationship between Chapter 19 and Chapter 4. You may recall that we commented upon the fact that there were several items in the text that helped to bracket this block of material. And that one of those items is this repeated oath to obey everything that God commanded them. That bracketing is a literary function in the text. But more important than that literary function is the theological function of these oaths. And so that's what I would like to talk about for a moment. First, you recall back in Chapter 19 we observe that God said that Israel could be his treasured possession if they would keep the covenant perfectly. And so in Chapter 19 Verse 5 and 6 we read "Now, therefore, if you will, indeed, obey my voice" -- and here the Hebrew could probably be better translated "if you will fully obey my voice" or "completely obey my voice" -- "and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you should speak to the people of Israel" -- talking to Moses there. And you recall that Israel swears to do exactly that in Chapter 19 Verse 8, "All the people answered together and said, 'All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.'" So they understood. God said to them "If you obey my voice and my covenant fully, perfectly, then you will be my treasured possession." And the people said, "Yes, this is what we want to do." That was actually before they heard what God wanted them to do. Remember, God didn't actually tell them what his stipulations were until the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant. And so now here in Chapter 24, we're after that. After. And they've heard all that God commands them to do. And so in this covenant ceremony we come to Verse 7 where Moses takes the Book of the Covenant and reads it in the hearing of the people. And they say here -- I'll quote again -- "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will obey." So the people -- once they've heard what God wants them to do, they affirm that they will do it. And again, actually even before that in Verse 3 Moses had told them all the words of the Lord. And the people answer with one voice and said, 'All the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do." So three times here in this covenant formalization process. Once before and twice after the people have heard what God has told them. That he expects complete obedience on their part. And they have sworn complete and perfect obedience. And I think that we have to recognize here is that Israel is apparently sincere and confident that they can obey God's instructions and keep his laws perfectly. Now, there's one other aspect to this that we should note before we leave this issue. And that is that there are no provisions for failure in this covenant. If you look back at the material from Chapter 20 to Chapter 23, there are no atoning sacrifices specified at this point. There are, you know, some feasts. But those are not atoning feasts. They are like the Thanksgiving harvest or something like that. There is no ritual for the forgiveness of sins that has been given to them at this point. There are absolutely no provisions for failure. Either they will keep the covenant perfectly and be God's treasured possession or they will not keep the covenant and not be God's perfect treasured possession. So at the end of Chapter 24 as we leave this covenant ceremony, we're left with one great unanswered question hanging like the sword of Damocles over the end of this text. And that is: What will happen if Israel fails to keep the covenant perfectly? That's the question that we'll see becomes very critical in the next stage of the story of the book of Exodus. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***