Exodus 34

Exodus 34

Exodus 34:1 Yahveh told Moses, “Cut yourself two stone tablets like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

Exodus 34:2 Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and station yourself there for me on the top of the mountain.

Exodus 34:3 No one should come up with you and let no one be seen anywhere on the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.”

Exodus 34:4 So Moses cut two stone tablets like the first. And he got up early in the morning and climbed Mount Sinai, as Yahveh had commanded him, and took in his hand two stone tablets.

Exodus 34:5 Yahveh descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name: Yahveh.

Exodus 34:6 Yahveh passed before him and proclaimed, “Yahveh, Yahveh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in covenant faithfulness and reliability,

Exodus 34:7 keeping covenant faithfulness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Exodus 34:8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the ground and worshiped.

Exodus 34:9 And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let Yahveh walk among us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

Exodus 34:10 And he said, “Notice, I am making a covenant. In front of all your people I will do miracles, such as have not been done in all the land or in any nation. And all the people among whom you reside will see the work of Yahveh, because it is a terrifying thing that I will do with you.

Exodus 34:11 “Observe what I command you this day. Notice, I will remove from you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Exodus 34:12 Be careful not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or else it will become a trap among you.

Exodus 34:13 You should tear down their altars and break their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim

Exodus 34:14 (because you should worship no other god, because Yahveh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),

Exodus 34:15 or else you would make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they lust after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice,

Exodus 34:16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters lust after their gods and make your sons lust after their gods.

Exodus 34:17 “You should not make for yourself any gods out of cast metal.

Exodus 34:18 “You should keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you should eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, because in the month Abib you came out from Egypt.

Exodus 34:19 All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep.

Exodus 34:20 The firstborn of a donkey you should redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it, you should break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you should redeem. And none should appear before me empty-handed.

Exodus 34:21 “Six days you should work, but on the seventh day you should rest. In plowing time and in harvest you should rest.

Exodus 34:22 You should observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.

Exodus 34:23 Three times in the year should all your males appear before Yahveh God, the God of Israel.

Exodus 34:24 Because I will remove nations from around you and enlarge your borders; so, no one will crave your land, when you go up to appear before Yahveh your God three times in the year.

Exodus 34:25 “You should not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning.

Exodus 34:26 You should bring the first of the first pickings from your soil into the house of Yahveh your God. You should not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

Exodus 34:27 And Yahveh told Moses, “Rewrite these words, because these words show that I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

Exodus 34:28 So he was there with Yahveh forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Words.

Exodus 34:29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the reminder in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.

Exodus 34:30 Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and noticed the skin of his face shining, and they were afraid to come near him.

Exodus 34:31 But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them.

Exodus 34:32 Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them everything that Yahveh had told him in Mount Sinai.

Exodus 34:33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.

Exodus 34:34 Whenever Moses went in before Yahveh to speak with him, he would remove the veil, until he came out. And when he came out and told the people of Israel what he was commanded,

Exodus 34:35 the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Exodus 34 quotes:

“Nowhere is the good news of God’s saving grace more evident than in the relationship between Exodus 32, with its sordid tale of the golden calf, and Exodus 34, the narrative of Yahweh’s gracious restoration of the covenant with the chosen people.”

Newsome, James D. Exodus. 1st ed, Geneva Press, 1998. p. 111.

“Exodus 34 provides for Israel’s restitution and future with the Lord. The self-revelation of God occurs in a new way in time and history.”

Bruckner, James K. Exodus. Hendrickson Publishers ; Paternoster, 2008. p. 280.

“In Exodus 34:29 we read that the face of Moses “was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.” The Hebrew word for “radiant” is derived from the same word in Hebrew which means “horn.” When the church father Jerome translated the Bible into the Latin Language, he conveyed the idea that as Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of stone, his head appeared as though horns were projecting from it. Michelangelo’s statue of Moses therefore portrays Moses’ head with horns instead of rays of light.

Wendland, Ernst H. Exodus. Northwestern Pub. House, 1984. p. 253-254.