What was the significance of the sprinkling of blood?

The first enquiry must be as to the signification of the blood. It cannot be atonement, because the people and the book are sprinkled equally with the altar; nor, for the same reason, could it be cleansing. The life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11), and consequently the blood, the shedding of it, will represent death, and death, when connected with sacrifice, as the penalty of sin. Here therefore the sprinkling of the blood signifies death as the penal sanction of the law. The people promised obedience, and then they, as well as the book, were sprinkled to teach that death would be the penalty of transgression. Such was the solemn position into which, by their own consent, they had been brought. They undertook to obey under the penalty of death. Well therefore might the apostle say, "As many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse." (Gal. 3:10.) It is the same now in principle with all who accept the ground of law as the way of life, all who are trusting to their own works as the condition of blessing. They know it not, but thereby they are really binding upon their shoulders the curse of the law, like the Israelites in this scene, and accepting the condition of death as the penalty of disobedience.

The first covenant was inaugurated with blood, as we read in Ex. 24. This is not redemption, but in the strongest contrast with it. The type of redemption had been already given (Ex. 12, 14) in the blood of the paschal lamb, followed by the passage of the Red Sea: the blood which sheltered from the judgment of God; and the power which thereon set the people free from their enemies destroyed for ever. But now Israel far from God had accepted to stand on the condition of their own obedience, Ex. 19; and God had spoken those ten words which would put the people to the proof. Here accordingly (Ex. 24) the covenant receives its seal in blood. "And Moses took half of the blood and put it in a bason; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people; and they said, All that Jehovah hath spoken will we do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant which Jehovah hath made with you concerning all these words." It was the old covenant, not the new; the law, not redemption. The blood which, as this Epistle states, was sprinkled on the book and all the people, simply set forth death as the penalty of disobedience. Hence it was in no way propitiatory but penal.

The soul is thus said to be "sanctified unto obedience." It is not a question of being better or worse, but it is turning to God; and if it is sanctification to obedience, it is also to the "blood of sprinkling." Now I have to learn the value of that blood. He has brought me under the sprinkling of blood, as Israel was by coming out of Egypt; and what was the sprinkling of blood then? It was the seal, while liable to the sentence of death, of the covenant which they were to obey; Ex. 24:6-7, 8. If they obeyed, they stood, but if not, the penalty of death was their portion. Is it so with us? No. We have disobeyed, but He (Jesus) has suffered for us, and we are sealed under the covenant brought in by Him for the disobedient. We are brought under the blood of sprinkling, whatever its efficacy is. Nothing has power against this tide. Does my guilt rise up? or Satan come against me? All is gone, because of the value of His blood. I have, as the first thing, redemption through His blood, perfect deliverance from all that was for my condemnation. I am, in my whole condition as a sinner, redeemed out of it for ever. The covenants, we know, were sealed with blood. Abraham and Jeremiah killed a calf, and the blood was a witness to the covenant. This covenant differs from former ones, inasmuch as it is not binding as to guilt if we fall; on the contrary, it discharges us from guilt by the blood that was shed for it.

Another illustration of this may be gathered from Exodus 24. When Moses had read to the people the covenant which was made by the Lord at Sinai, he sprinkled half of the blood of the sacrifices upon the people (having sprinkled the other half upon the altar), saying, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning these words." (v. 8.) This will explain the words in Hebrews concerning an apostate, who is said to have "counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing." (Heb. 10:29.) The blood sprinkled upon the people, while it set forth death as the penal sanction of the law, brought them thereby under the obligation of obedience. It was for this they were set apart. (Compare 1 Peter 1:2.) So to the eye of God all His people now on the earth are seen, as it were, sprinkled under the value of the blood of Christ, and thus set apart to Him for His service. They are sanctified through the blood.

Another illustration of this may be gathered from Exodus 24. When Moses had read to the people the covenant which was made by the Lord at Sinai, he sprinkled half of the blood of the sacrifices upon the people (having sprinkled the other half upon the altar), saying, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning these words." (v. 8.) This will explain the words in Hebrews concerning an apostate, who is said to have "counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing." (Heb. 10:29.) The blood sprinkled upon the people, while it set forth death as the penal sanction of the law, brought them thereby under the obligation of obedience. It was for this they were set apart. (Compare 1 Peter 1:2.) So to the eye of God all His people now on the earth are seen, as it were, sprinkled under the value of the blood of Christ, and thus set apart to Him for His service. They are sanctified through the blood.

Israel now, at a distance from God, standing on the ground of their responsibility before God, having pledged themselves to unqualified obedience to the terms of the covenant, are made to realise their solemn position by the sealing of this covenant by blood. The sprinkling of blood here is not propitiation, but penalty, the blood signifying that death is the penal sanction of the law. By the sprinkling of blood, Israel bound themselves to keep the whole law in a covenant of death.

This chapter is a fitting conclusion of this second section of the second part. It begins with the giving of the law and ends with the glory of the Lord. Moses alone was to come near to Jehovah; Aaron, Nadab and Abihu with the seventy elders of Israel , had to worship afar. Moses is a type of Christ in his exclusive privilege and attitude. Twice the people make the promise to keep the covenant, not realizing what they were doing. Then the blood was sprinkled upon the altar, upon the book of the covenant (Heb. 9:19), and on the people. In this way the covenant was ratified. This sprinkling of the blood here has not the meaning of atonement. It rather stands for the penalty of the broken covenant. The blood standing for life given, was a solemn warning that the penalty of disobedience would be death. At the same time the offerings and the blood point to Christ. He came and took the curse of the law upon Himself When He came to give His life a ransom for many, the people, so occupied with the ordinances, the law and the traditions of men, cried, "This blood be upon us and upon our children." Ever since blood-guiltiness rests upon them and the curse of their own law is their portion till they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced.

There is wide scope in the Lord's words to His disciples concerning the cup, as recorded by the Spirit in the first Gospel. On the solemn night of His betrayal, "He took the cup" (having previously handed to the disciples the bread), "and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many, for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26:27-28). The contrast is immense between the new covenant, of which the precious blood is the basis, and the covenant made by Jehovah with Israel when He brought them out of Egypt. At Sinai, God proposed to His people His law — His requirement from man in the flesh — setting forth blessing as the result of obedience, and condemnation and death as the sure results of failure and sin. And that covenant was not dedicated without blood." For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God has enjoined to you" (Heb. 9:19-20; Ex. 24). The blood thus sprinkled was the sign of death, the consequence of disobedience and sin. We know how this ended with regard to that people — in disaster and ruin. God had scarcely inscribed the law when the first commandment was broken in the camp by the making of the golden calf. All was thus over; and had God kept Israel to the strict terms of their engagement, He would have destroyed them in a moment.

Verses 18-20. "Whence not even the first [covenant] was dedicated without blood," etc. In the former covenant the people were contracting parties. The blood therefore which was sprinkled, was a witness against them that life was forfeited by the slightest failure on their parts to verify its terms. The sprinkling here referred to is that which was performed by Moses immediately after the first promulgation of the covenant, and previously to the reception of the tables, or the erection of the tabernacle (Ex. 24). Its import, as it respected the people, was declared to them by the words of the Lawgiver, who had just before rehearsed in their audience the commandments of Jehovah. "This is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you." It was the solemn and significant adjustment of that yoke of bondage, from which the blood of human life alone might set them free. But it implied much more than this. The God who had invited Israel to this compact was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. By promise He had bound Himself to Israel for his blessing long before. He had now enjoined upon him this fresh covenant of debt. The intervention of the legal covenant, although its effect was to postpone the accomplishment of the earlier promise, was in no way to detract from its validity. The covenant of Moses was, as we have seen, a preparation for a better and eternal bond. In the very ceremonial therefore of its ratification, there was an act performed which gave typical expression to the manner of His grace -who, having enclosed the objects of His promise in a covenant of death, would yet make life and everlasting peace their sure possession through His own assumption of the debtor's place. In the historical record of this transaction mention is only made of sacrificial blood, as that which Moses sprinkled (Ex. 24:5, 8). In the present passage there are enumerated, in addition to the blood of calves and goats, "water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop." These things, the use of which in the purification of the leper (Lev. 14), is well known, point not indistinctly to the personal excellency and marvellous grace of Him, whose precious blood-shedding should one day make the Law of condemnation become a consenting witness to His people's freedom from all sin.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the blood there is used as a sign of the putting away of sin. This is not by any means the only meaning of blood, even where it was sacrificially employed. The meaning in that sense I take to be this: that the people formally pledged themselves to legal obedience, and bound themselves in this solemn manner to obey. Just as the blood sprinkled was from the animals killed in view of the old covenant, so they shrank not from that dread and extreme exaction if they failed to obey the will of God. It was an imprecation of death on themselves from God if they violated His commandments. Therefore it is observable there was the sprinkling of the book along with it. This had nothing at all to do with atonement — a supposition which only arises from people closing their eyes to other truths in the Bible, to their own great loss even in the truth they hold. We must leave room for all truth. Atonement has its own incomparable place. But certainly when the Israelites were binding themselves to obey the law, it was as far as possible from a confession of atonement. It is a total fallacy, injurious to God's glory and to our own souls, to interpret the Bible after this fashion. It only makes confusion in jumbling up law and gospel, to the detriment of both, and indeed to the destruction of all the beauty and force of truth.