Exodus 24:2

2 And Moses {alone} will come near to Yahweh, and they will not come near, and the people will not go up with him."

Exodus 24:2 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 24:2

And Moses alone shall come near the Lord
Into the cloud where he was, and talk with him face to face, as a man talketh with his friend; which was great nearness indeed, and a peculiar favour and high honour was this:

but they shall not come nigh;
Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel:

neither shall the people go up with him;
not any of them, much less the whole body. It seems, by this account, that Moses had been down from the mount after he had received the laws recorded in the two preceding chapters; though as yet he had not related them to the people, but did before he went up again by the above order, as appears from what follows.

Exodus 24:2 In-Context

1 And to Moses he said, "Go up to Yahweh--you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy from the elders of Israel--and you will worship at a distance.

2 And Moses {alone} will come near to Yahweh, and they will not come near, and the people will not go up with him."

3 And Moses came, and he told the people all the words of Yahweh and all the regulations. And all the people answered with one voice, and they said, "All the words that Yahweh has spoken we will do."

4 And Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh, and he rose early in the morning, and he built an altar at the base of the mountain and [set up] twelve memorial stones for the twelve tribes of Israel.

5 And he sent young men from the {Israelites}, and they offered burnt offerings, and they sacrificed sacrifices [as] fellowship offerings to Yahweh [using] bulls.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "by himself"; literally "to the solitude of him"