Moses cuts two new tables of stone — this time he supplies the stone — and climbs Sinai again. God comes down in the cloud and proclaims His own name in full: The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. The covenant is renewed. Moses spends another forty days on the mountain, and comes down not knowing that his face is shining so brightly from being with God that the people are afraid to come near him.
A study in Exodus 34 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
Hew Thee Two Tables Of Stone Like Unto The First
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.”
Exodus 34:1
The first tables were entirely God’s work, stone and writing both (Exodus 31:18). This time Moses cuts the stone and God supplies the writing. The words are identical — not one commandment changed after the calf. The law was never the problem; it is written again, unaltered, because it still stands.
The LORD, The LORD God, Merciful And Gracious
“And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.”
Exodus 34:6-7
This is God’s answer to “show me thy glory.” He does not lead with power; He leads with mercy, grace, patience, steadfast love, forgiveness — and then, without contradiction, “will by no means clear the guilty.” A God who both forgives sin and does not pretend it away. This self-description is quoted back to God more than any other verse in the Old Testament — by David, Jonah, Nehemiah, Joel — whenever someone needs to remind Him (and themselves) who He is.
Pardon Our Iniquity, And Take Us For Thine Inheritance
“And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.”
Exodus 34:9
Moses turns the very reason God gave for withdrawing — “thou art a stiffnecked people” — into his reason for asking God to stay: because they are stiffnecked, come among us; they will never make it otherwise. He asks God to take a difficult people as His own possession. That is the logic of grace.
Behold, I Make A Covenant
“And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth… For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
Exodus 34:10, 14
The covenant broken by the calf is re-made from God’s side. Its first concern is exactly the one they failed: no other gods, no images, no treaties with the idolaters of Canaan, keep the feasts, keep the Sabbath “in earing time and in harvest.” “Whose name is Jealous” — God will not share His people, because sharing is not love.
The Words Of The Covenant, The Ten Commandments
“And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”
Exodus 34:28
Scripture names them here without ambiguity: “the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” — and “he” who wrote them, from verse 1, is the LORD. These ten, and only these, go into the ark under the mercy seat. The other laws sit beside it in a book; the Ten sit inside, at the covenant’s heart.
The Skin Of His Face Shone
“When Moses came down from mount Sinai… Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.”
Exodus 34:29-30
Time spent with God leaves a mark the person cannot see on themselves but everyone else can. Ellen White reads the radiance as coming from two things Moses had been shown — the glory of the law, and “the heavenly light streaming from Calvary.” Paul builds a whole argument on the veil Moses then wore (2 Corinthians 3): a fading glory covered up, versus the unveiled, growing glory of those who behold Christ.
“While Moses was in the mount, God presented to him, not only the tables of the law, but also the plan of salvation. He saw that the sacrifice of Christ was pre-figured by all the types and symbols of the Jewish age; and it was the heavenly light streaming from Calvary, no less than the glory of the law of God, that shed such a radiance upon the face of Moses.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 330
