Every precept. — Or, commandment. See Exodus 24:3; where we read that Moses “told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments.” These he wrote in a book (Hebrews 9:4), and this “book of the covenant” (Hebrews 9:7) he “read in the audience of the people.” The contents would probably be the Ten Commandments, and the laws of Exodus 20:22 to Exodus 23:33.
Of calves and of goats. — In Exodus (Hebrews 9:5) we read of “burnt offerings” and of “peace offerings of oxen.” The “goats” may be included in the burnt offerings; for though Jewish tradition held that a goat was never sacrificed as a burnt offering, Leviticus 1:10 is clear on the other side. It is possible that “the calves and the goats” may be only a general expression for “the sacrificial victims.” (See Hebrews 9:12.)
With water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop. — In Exodus 24 there is no mention of these details, but similar notices are found in other parts of the Pentateuch, where the ceremony of sprinkling for purification is described (Exodus 12:22; Leviticus 14:4; Leviticus 14:6; and Numbers 19:6; Numbers 19:17-18). The water (itself an emblem and means of cleansing) was designed to prevent the coagulation of the blood, and to increase the quantity of the purifying fluid. The “scarlet wool” may have been used to bind the hyssop to the stick of cedar-wood, which was the instrument of sprinkling. The precise notices in the Law forbid us to doubt that each of these substances had a definite symbolical meaning, but to us the subject is involved in obscurity.
Both the book and all the people. — The Greek is more emphatic: both the book itself and all the people. The latter fact alone is mentioned in Exodus (Hebrews 9:8). The sprinkling of the book of the covenant may be regarded from two points of view. It may depend either on the same principle as the (later) sprinkling of the Tabernacle (Hebrews 9:22), and the “reconciling” of the Tabernacle and the Holy Place (Leviticus 16:20) on the Day of Atonement; or on the symbolism of the covenant as noticed above (Hebrews 9:15-17). In the latter case we must suppose that, as the blood was divided into two portions (Exodus 24:6) in token of the two parties to the covenant, and part “cast upon the altar,” the book of the covenant was associated with the altar as representing the presence of Jehovah.