Lesson #16

The Ten Commandments, 2

nd
Edition
(Exodus 34: 135)
In Lesson #15 Moses has been on Mt. Sinai with God for forty days and forty
nights, during which time no one has heard from either Moses or God. The
Israelites conclude that Moses is dead and that God has abandoned them,
perhaps recalling how God lured the Egyptians into the Red Sea, only to kill
them all. Could God possibly have done the same thing to the Israelites,
luring them into the wilderness, only to kill them?

Desperate, the Israelites turn to a powerful and compassionate god they
know, Hathor, the nurturing mother-goddess of Egypt, whose center of
worship isnot coincidentlyat Serabit el-Kahdim, not far from Mt. Sinai.
There Aaron sculpts a golden calf, the icon of the goddess Hathor.

Atop Mt. Sinai God tells Moses what is going on down below, and he vows to
slay all the Israelites for their disobedience. Moses, in a brilliant and subtle
rhetorical ploy, talks God out of it. Descending Mt. Sinai to the Israelite
camp, Moses, in hot anger, smashes the tablets of the Ten Commandments
and then disciplines the Israelites, slaughtering 3,000 of their leaders.




















In Lesson #16, after settling the score with the leaders of
the golden calf rebellion, Moses ascends Mt. Sinai once
again to confer with God, who says to him: Cut two
stone tablets like the former, that I may write on them
the words which were on the former tablets that you
broke (Exodus 34: 1).

Moses then recommits himself and the Israelites to Gods
covenant, spending an additional forty days and forty
nights on Mt. Sinai in an extraordinarily intimate
relationship with God. When Moses descends the
mountain his face had become radiant (Exodus 34: 29).







The Lord said to Moses: Cut two
stone tablets like the former, that I
may write on them the words
which were on the former tablets
that you broke (34: 1).

As the great medieval French rabbi Rashi
(A.D. 1040-1105) said in his commentary
on the Tanakh: You smashed the first
ones, you carve the others.

















The Holy Bible with Illustrations by
Gustave Dor. London: Cassel, Petter, and
Galpin, 1866.
Get ready for tomorrow morning, when you are to go up
Mount Sinai and there present yourself to me on the top
of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let
no one even be seen on any part of the mountain; even
the sheep and the cattle are not to graze in front of this
mountain (34: 2-3).

This commandment repeats the injunction in chapter 19
to separate the people from Mt. Sinai when God gives the
Law, but this timein light of the golden calf incident
the separation is total, with no attendants present on the
mountain as before.







Moses then cut two stone
tablets like the former, and
early the next morning he went
up Mount Sinai as the Lord had
commanded him, taking in his
hand the two stone tablets
(34: 4).


















This is HEAVY!
So the Lord passed before him and proclaimed: The
Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger
and abounding in love and fidelity, continuing his love for
a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness,
rebellion, and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless
*yet he does not wholly acquit . . .], but bringing
punishment for their parents wickedness on children and
childrens children to the third and fourth generation!
(34: 6-7).

As in the 1
st
commandment (20: 5-6), Gods mercy and love extends
to the thousandth generation, but his punishment to the 3
rd
and 4
th

generation. Here, the implication is that in cases where offenders
willfully persist in their wickedness, rebellion and sin they cannot
expect to be found guiltless, for all of Gods compassion: God is a
God of love, but he is also a God of justice.

























Moses, in a skillful
rhetorical move,
carefully acknowledges
Gods justice and the
Israelites stiff-necked
wickedness and sin,
while pleading for Gods
mercy.
Yes, Lord, we
are stiff-necked,
but . . .
Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)
2. No idols (17)
3. Keep Passover (18)
4. Consecrate 1
st
born (19-20a)
5. Bring gifts (20b)
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
7. Keep Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] (22-24)
8. No leaven (25)
9. Keep Feast of Ingathering [Tabernacles] (26a)
10. No boiling young goat in mothers milk (26b)

Epilogue (34: 27-28)




















Prologue (34: 10-11)

The Lord said: Here is the covenant I will make. Before all your
people I will perform marvels never before done in any nation
anywhere on earth, so that all the people among whom you live may
see the work of the Lord. Awe-inspiring are the deeds I will perform
with you! As for you, observe what I am commanding you today.

Often referred to as the Small Book of the Covenant, the material that follows the
Prologue replicates material from the Book of the Covenant (21-23), as well as from the
Ten Commandments (20). This is not a variant of the Decalogue, as many of the
commands are quite secondary: e.g., no leaven in sacrifices (v. 25); no boiling a young
goat in its mothers milk (v. 26b). Rather, the Small Book of the Covenant recalls the
fuller extent of Gods comprehensive teaching first introduced in the Ten
Commandments and their applications, and later developed throughout the Torah.

The Small Book of the Covenant functions much like repeating the key structural
notes of a musical motif in later movements of a 4-movement symphony, creating both
cohesion and forward movement.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)

Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land
that you are to enter; lest they become a snare among you. Tear down
their altars; smash their sacred stones, and cut down their asherahs.
You shall not bow down to any other god, for the LordJealous his
nameis a jealous God . . .

In light of the golden calf episode, God issues a stern warning against any involvement
with other cultures and their gods, commanding that the Israelites destroy their places
of worship, and implicitly forbidding the Israelites from having any personal
relationships with the indigenous people of Canaan. Twice referring to such people
prostituting themselves to their gods *literally, whoring with+, the command
includes raw sexual imagery, portraying God as Israels jealous husband or lover,
imagery that both Hosea and Jeremiah vividly develop later in Scripture.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)
2. No idols (17)

You shall not make for yourselves molten gods.

The prohibition against molten gods resonates deeply, given the recent
golden calf incident.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)
2. No idols (17)
3. Keep Passover (18)

You shall keep the festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days at the
appointed time in the month of Abib you are to eat no leavened bread,
as I commanded you; for in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt.

Passover is the great archetypical act of redemption, the pivotal event
in Jewish history, and as Exodus 12: 14 states, it is to be celebrated in
perpetuity. Through a Christian interpretive lens, Passover
foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the redemption of
all humanity.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)
2. No idols (17)
3. Keep Passover (18)
4. Consecrate 1
st
born (19-20a)

To me belongs every male that opens the womb among all your
livestock, whether in the herd or in the flock. The firstling of a donkey
you shall redeem with a lamb; if you do not redeem it, you must break
its neck. The firstborn among your sons you shall redeem.

As we have learned, the Egyptians practiced consecration of the firstborn to their gods,
and by God killing all the firstborn among the Egyptians in the 10
th
plague, he deprives
the Egyptian gods of what is rightfully theirs, utterly defeating and plundering them. In
Exodus 13: 1-16 God institutes the practice for the Israelites.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)

1. No covenants in Canaan (12-16)
2. No idols (17)
3. Keep Passover (18)
4. Consecrate 1
st
born (19-20a)
5. Bring gifts (20b)

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

First commanded in Exodus 23: 15, the injunction reflects standard sovereign/vassal
protocol: when a lesser person appears before a greater person, the lesser person
brings a gift. Recall Abraham appearing before Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of
God Most High. Melchizedek blesses Abraham, and Abraham in return gives
Melchizedek a tenth of the plunder he took from the northern kings who attacked
Sodom (Genesis 14: 18-20).





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
Six days you may labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even
during the seasons of plowing and harvesting you must rest.

The Sabbath is first set aside as a day of rest in Genesis 2: 2-3; it is
included as commandment #4 in the Ten Commandments; and it is
reiterated throughout Scripture. Here, the clause even during the
seasons of plowing and harvesting provides a special emphasis for
those living in an agrarian society, since a farmer may be sorely
tempted to break the Sabbath during the urgency of plowing and
harvesting in the agrarian cycle.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
7. Keep Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] (22-24)

You shall keep the feast of Weeks [Pentecost] with the first fruits of the
wheat harvest, likewise the feast of Ingathering *Booths or Tabernacles+ at
the close of the year. Three times a year all your men shall appear before the
Lord, the Lord God of Israel. Since I will drive out the nations before you and
enlarge your territory, no one will covet your land when you go up three times
a year to appear before the Lord your God.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread [Passover], the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost], and the Feast
of Ingathering [Tabernacles] are pilgrimage festivals, agricultural celebrations with deep
religious significance: Passover remembers the Exodus; Pentecost remembers the giving
of the Law at Mt. Sinai; and Tabernacles remembers the forty years in the wilderness.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
7. Keep Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] (22-24)
8. No leaven (25)
You shall not offer me the blood of sacrifice with anything leavened,
nor shall the sacrifice of the Passover feast be kept overnight for the
next day.

Leaven, a symbol or emblem of sin, is strictly forbidden in any sacrifice to God,
and the Passover lamb must be consumed on the evening of Passover
anything left over must be burned up, as commanded in Exodus 12: 10,
reflecting the urgency of leaving Egypt the same night.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
7. Keep Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] (22-24)
8. No leaven (25)
9. Keep Feast of Ingathering [Tabernacles] (26a)
The choicest first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the
Lord, your God.

As no person shall appear empty-handed before the Lord, so shall each person
bring the choicest first fruits of the soil. God demands our best, not our
leftovers (see Malachi 1: 6-8).





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
6. Keep the Sabbath (21)
7. Keep Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] (22-24)
8. No leaven (25)
9. Keep Feast of Ingathering [Tabernacles] (26a)
10. No boiling young goat in mothers milk (26b)
You shall not boil a young goat in its mothers milk.

As commanded in the Book of the Covenant (23: 19b), boiling a young goat in
its mothers milk is fundamentally cruel, transforming a mothers nurturing
milk into a baby animals instrument of death. The command is also the origin
of separating meat and dairy in the kosher food laws of later Judaism.





















Prologue (34: 10-11)
. . .
Epilogue (34: 27-28)
Then the Lord said to Moses: Write down these words, for in accordance
with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. So Moses
was there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, without eating any
food or drinking any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the
covenant, the ten words.

What Moses inscribes on the tablets is called words or commandments *Hebrew,
devarim] for the first time. Significantly, when God spoke to Moses from the burning
bush commanding him to return to Egypt, Moses objected saying, I am slow of speech
and tongue, literally: I am a man without words *devarim+. Here Moses is a man
with words [devarim] in the highest possible sense.

Imbedding within this discourse on words Moses not eating or drinking for a
formulaic forty days and forty nights highlights Moses heroic, superhuman efforts on
behalf of the Israelites.






















Moses, horned
As Moses came down from Mount Sinai
with the two tablets of the covenant in
his hands, he did not know that the skin
of his face had become radiant while he
spoke with the Lord (34: 29).

The Hebrew word qaran, translated above as
radiant, has the sense of Moses face being
luminous, metaphorically emitting rays of light. In
the Latin Vulgate, St. Jerome famously translated
qaran as cornuta (horned), emphasizing the
metaphorical sense. Many readers however,
including Michelangelo, read cornuta literally,
resulting in Moses sporting a set of horns.

This divine fire or luminosity in ones face after
being in the presence of God is captured stylistically
in other works as a halo.

















Michelangelo. Moses (marble), c. 1515.
St. Peter in Chains, Rome.

1. Chapter 34 opens with a comic touch. Why?
2. After the golden calf incident God distances himself from his
people. How does our narrative accomplish this?
3. God is frighteningly serious in his response to the golden calf
incident, emphasizing that although a God of mercy and
abounding in love, he will not forgive those who willfully and
persistently sin. How does Moses use Gods very clear
statement in convincing God to pardon the Israelites, exactly
what he said he wont do?
4. How does the Small Book of the Covenant function in this
section of Scripture? Why does it occupy so much of chapter
34?
5. Why does Moses veil himself when he finishes speaking to the
Israelites?




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