And Moses alone shall come near the Lord,.... Into the cloud where he was, and talk with him face to face, as a man talketh with his friend; which was great nearness indeed, and a peculiar favour and high honour was this: but they shall not come nigh; Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel: neither shall the people go up with him; not any of them, much less the whole body. It seems, by this account, that Moses had been down from the mount after he had received the laws recorded in the two preceding chapters; though as yet he had not related them to the people, but did before he went up again by the above order, as appears from what follows.