Exodus 34

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The new tablets and the name of Yahweh

¹ Yahweh said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. ² Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain. ³ No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen anywhere on the whole mountain; let no flocks or herds graze in front of that mountain." ⁴ So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. He rose early in the morning and went up to Mount Sinai, as Yahweh had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone.

⁵ Yahweh came down in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. ⁶ Yahweh passed by before him and proclaimed, "Yahweh, Yahweh, El compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means hold the guilty guiltless, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the children's children, on the third and on the fourth generation." ⁸ And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. ⁹ And he said, "If now I have found favor in Your sight, Adonai, please let Adonai go in our midst, for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your inheritance."

¹⁰ And He said, "See, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do wonders such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of Yahweh, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. ¹¹ Observe what I command you this day. See, I am driving out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. ¹² Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³ But you shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherah poles, ¹⁴ for you shall not bow down to any other god, for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous El, ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they prostitute themselves after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶ and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters prostitute themselves after their gods and make your sons prostitute themselves after their gods. ¹⁷ You shall not make for yourself gods of cast metal.

The appointed feasts

¹⁸ "You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread: seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in the month of Aviv you came out of Egypt.

¹⁹ "All that opens the womb is Mine, and all your male livestock, the firstborn of ox and sheep. ²⁰ The firstling of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before Me empty-handed.

²¹ "Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.

²² "You shall keep the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. ²³ Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Adon Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel. ²⁴ For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before Yahweh your Elohim three times a year.

²⁵ "You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until morning. ²⁶ The first of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of Yahweh your Elohim. You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk."

²⁷ And Yahweh said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." ²⁸ So he was there with Yahweh 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.

The shining face of Moses

²⁹ When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the Testimony in Moses' hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been speaking with Him. ³⁰ Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, and indeed, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. ³¹ But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. ³² Afterward all the children of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that Yahweh had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.

³³ When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. ³⁴ But whenever Moses went in before Yahweh to speak with Him, he would remove the veil until he came out; and when he came out and told the children of Israel what he had been commanded, ³⁵ the children of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with Him.

Notes

• 34:6 This is the answer to Moses' prayer, "Show me Your glory" (33:18-19): Yahweh reveals His glory by proclaiming His name, that is, His character. These words become a confession repeated across Scripture (Numbers 14:18; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2), and later Jewish tradition counts in verses 6-7 the "thirteen attributes of mercy" (shelosh esreh middot), still recited in synagogue prayers. Many hear an echo in John 1:14, where the Word is "full of grace and truth," the Greek pair that matches rav chesed ve'emet, "abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness."
• 34:7 "Forgiving" is nose, literally "lifting, carrying away": Yahweh Himself bears away iniquity (avon), transgression or rebellion (pesha) and sin (chatta'ah), the three main Hebrew words for wrongdoing. The same verb was in Moses' plea, "if You will forgive their sin" (32:32). Lovingkindness reaches "thousands" while the visiting of iniquity reaches the third and fourth generation: mercy far outweighs judgment, as in the Ten Words (20:5-6).
• 34:14 "Jealous" is qanna, a word used in Scripture only of God. It is the jealousy of a husband who will not share his wife's love, which is why the next verses speak of Israel "prostituting" itself after other gods: the covenant is like a marriage. Paul asks believers who would share in idol feasts, "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?" (1 Corinthians 10:22).
• 34:22 The Feast of Harvest of 23:16 is here named chag shavuot, "the Feast of Weeks," because seven weeks are counted to it from the offering of the first sheaf (Leviticus 23:15-16; Deuteronomy 16:9-10); in Greek it is Pentecost, "fiftieth," the day the Holy Spirit was poured out (Acts 2:1). The Feast of Ingathering is Sukkot, "at the turn of the year" (tekufat ha-shanah), the same autumn season that 23:16 calls "the end" (literally "the going out") "of the year."
• 34:28 "The Ten Words" is aseret ha-devarim, the Torah's own name for the words of 20:1-17. The Hebrew says only "and he wrote," but verse 1 and Deuteronomy 10:2-4 point to Yahweh Himself as the writer, as on the first tablets. Moses' forty days and nights without bread or water are echoed by Elijah's forty days on the way to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8) and by Yeshua's forty days of fasting in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2).
• 34:29 "Shone" is karan, from qeren, "horn": the skin of his face sent out rays like horns of light, as Habakkuk 3:4 speaks of "rays" (qarnayim) from God's hand. The Latin Vulgate rendered it literally, "his face was horned" (cornuta), the wording behind the horned Moses of medieval art and of Michelangelo's statue. Paul draws on verses 29-35: the glory on Moses' face was real but fading, and he contrasts it with the greater glory of the new covenant, in which "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image" (2 Corinthians 3:7-18).

Exodus 33 · Exodus 35

Open in the study app