Laws and Regulations:
Yahweh begins to dictate His laws and regulations to the Israelites.  These are placing moral and ethical boundaries on behavior.  He limits retribution to “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Ex. 21:23-25)  This does not proscribe violence as many today commonly think, rather this places a limitation on violence.  Yahweh introduces the moral idea of proportionality.  Likewise, slaves are to be released upon the seventh year, “he shall be given his freedom without cost.” (Ex. 21:2)

Breaking the Ten Commandments deserves death:
What ensues is a list of proscriptions for dealing with people who break the law, which often times results in “must be put to death.”  Murderers are to be put to death.  Kidnappers “shall be put to death.”  Whoever strikes or curses his mother or father, “shall be put to death.” (Ex. 21:17)  “You shall not let a sorceress live.  Anyone who lies with an animal shall be put to death.  Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed.” (Ex. 22:17-19)  “Never mention the name of any other god; it shall not be heard from your lips.” (Ex. 23:13)  Like the Canaanite ritual, “you shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” (Ex. 23:19)

Keep the Feast Days:
Yahweh instructs the Israelites to keep the feast days, most probably Passover, Pentecost and Booths.  “Three times a year you shall celebrate a pilgrim feast to me. You shall keep the feast of Unleavened Bread.” (Ex. 23:14-15)

The Angel of the Lord:
The Angel of the Lord is Yahweh Himself, or in our New Testament Trinitarian understanding, more like God the Son in human form.  There is a purposeful blending of Yahweh and the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, a sort of haziness and mysteriousness about who is Yahweh and who is His angel?  Are there two forms of Yahwehs, as Judaic second temple literature contemplated?  The intentional mysteriousness about the Angel of the Lord is a foreshadowing and the slow reveal of the three Persons of the Trinity.  It is the obscured reality in the Exodus that God is three Persons, but who are one.  Yahweh says, “See, I am sending an angel before you, to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared. Be attentive to him and heed his voice.  Do not rebel against him, for he will not forgive your sin.  My authority resides in him.  If you heed his voice and carry out all I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.” (Ex. 23:20-22)  Who else but God can forgive sin?  Certainly not an angel.  Who carries the authority of Yahweh? Again, not an angel.  This is something, or more precise, someone, greater than an angel.  The angel is Yahweh, and Yahweh is the angel.  Yet, he is Yahweh, but somehow, mysteriously distinct from Yahweh. Yahweh is the angel in physical form, or most likely the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.  The words above presage the words of God the Father at the Transfiguration of Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Mt. 17:5)

The Warrior Angel of Yahweh and the Canaanites:
Just as the warrior Yahweh led the Israelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders and did battle with the Egyptians as a pillar of fire and cloud of smoke, so now too, the warrior Angel of Yahweh will do battle with the giant clans of the Canaanites to seize the Promised Land.  “My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.  Therefore, you shall not bow down in worship before their gods, nor shall you make anything like them; rather, you must demolish them and smash their sacred pillars.” (Ex. 23:23-24)  Again, Yahweh, or the Angel of Yahweh, will do battle with His enemies and those who serve the demonic “gods.”

The Giant Clans and Descendants of the Nephilim Targeted for Destruction:
Just as Nephilim and their progeny were targeted for destruction in the Great Flood of Noah, so now too, their descendants who survived are targeted for destruction. The Canaanites and the giant clans, the descendants of the Nephilim, as seen back in Genesis 6:1-4, reside in the land of Canaan. They worship the fallen angels and devils through idolatry, and engage in cultic human sacrifice and orgies. Yahweh tells the Israelites they must be thoroughly wiped out and utterly destroyed.  The seed and the corruption of the Nephilim must be eradicated from the earth, and especially, from the Promised Land.  This is the only instance in the Bible where a group of people is targeted for total annihilation, a holy war.  The Hebrew word is kharam/kherem, or “devote to destruction.”  Wherever the bloodlines of the Nephilim and giant clans are found, they are to be eradicated. “I will have the fear of me precede you, so that I will throw into panic every nation you reach.  I will make all your enemies turn from you in flight, and ahead of you I will send hornets to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.” (Ex. 27-28)  There is no clear cut answer in the commentaries whether the “hornets” are real, literal hornets (very probably), or figurative for the fear of Yahweh, or some other sort of plague or ailment, like leprosy.  In regards to the Canaanites: “You shall not make a covenant with them or their gods. They must not abide in your land, lest they make you sin against me by ensnaring you into worshiping their gods.” (Ex. 23:32-33)

The Ratification of the Covenant:
Then, Moses and “seventy of the elders of Israel” went up the mountain (Mt. Sinai) to worship Yahweh.  The number 70 is significant because it was 70 nations that were scattered amongst the earth at the Babel event, when God disinherited the nations.  God will now, through the Covenant with the one Jewish nation, “His portion,” begin to reclaim all the nations of the world, represented in the 70 nations scattered at Babel.  Through the seed of Abraham, all the world will be blessed.  The Israelites then offer holocausts and sacrifices of young bulls to Yahweh.  Then, “Moses took half of the blood and put it in large bowls; the other half he splashed on the altar.  Taking the book of the covenant, he read it aloud to the people, who answered: ‘All that the Lord has said, we will heed and do.’  Then he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.'” (Ex. 24:6-8) Then Moses and the seventy elders went up, “and they beheld the God of Israel.” (Ex. 24:10)  And finally, they have the sacred meal: “they beheld God, and ate and drank.” (Ex. 24:11)  Jesus later renews the New Covenant in His blood at the Last Supper, His own sacred meal of the Passover, transformed into the Catholic Mass.  As Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Lk. 22:20)  The sprinkling of the blood of bulls of the Old Covenant is replaced with the blood of Jesus Christ in the New Covenant.  Moses then passed into the midst of the cloud on Mt. Sinai into the presence of God, and “there he stayed for forty days and forty nights.” (Ex. 24:18)