God. One cannot see God and live (Exod. 33:20). It is thus for Aaron’s protection; as Haran says, the cloud is ‘to shroud the Seat of Grace, the sight of which, as explicitly stated in the text, may kill even Aaron’.10 Blood is brought into the inner sanctuary for the only time in Israelite ritual. Aaron first puts some of it on the ‘testimony’ as a symbol of atonement and substitution. The ark of the covenant sometimes goes by that name because it houses the table of covenant testimony given at
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