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In Exodus, Moses seals the covenant by splashing blood on the people, a detail not found in later rituals and hard to interpret. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos tries to resolve this by saying Moses sprinkled the blood on the altar instead.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 24:8
Hebrew Bible
6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and half of the blood he splashed on the altar. 7 He took the Book of the Covenant and read it aloud to the people, and they said, “We are willing to do and obey all that the Lord has spoken.” 8 So Moses took the blood and splashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Onkelos Exodus 24:8
Targum
6 And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 And he took the Book of the Covenant and read it before the people; and they said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do and obey. 8 And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the altar to make atonement for the people, and said, This is the Blood of the Covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.
Date: 50–500 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... When Moses wished, finally, to seal Israel's acceptance of God's laws and covenant, he did so in a rather strange way ... his gesture of sprinkling the blood on the people had no ready correspondent in later Temple practice and certainly must have seemed strange to interpreters. Some suggested that the phrase 'on the people' in this passage really meant 'on account of the people,' for the people's sake ..."
James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 412–413.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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Does the idea of sprinkling blood on the people purport with other ANE practices in other cultic systems?
Does the idea of sprinkling blood on the people purport with other ANE practices in other cultic systems?