By Water & Blood

Questions on Exodus 35: “You shall be to me a people for my own possession”

What is the meaning of “You shall be to me a people for my own possession from among all the nations; for all the earth is mine”?

“I am,” he says, “maker and master of all, and as maker I provide for all; but you I have consecrated to myself as a kind of exceptional people.” For he added this: “You shall be to me a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” Just as he preferred the Levites, who were Israelites, above the other tribes and set them apart for the divine liturgy—not neglecting the others, but through these caring for those—so he chose the seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: first because from them the Master Christ was going to spring according to the flesh; then, by showing his own power through what happened to them, and teaching all human beings the way of the knowledge of God. When these things had been said, “all the people answered and said, ‘All that God has said we will do and hear.’” This covenant of the people is like a kind of written bond; hence, when they transgressed their own confession, they were subjected to the curses of the legislation, from which the Master Christ freed those who have believed in him. “For Christ,” it says, “redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us.” As for periousios, Symmachus rendered it “exceptional.”