Exodus34chapter 34

Exodus 34:10-11

The covenant is made again on the far side of the calf, and the first thing promised is marvels such as have not been done in all the earth. Driving out the six nations runs back to Genesis 15:16, where God told Abram his seed would return when the iniquity of the Amorites was full. The work is called a terrible thing, which in the English of 1611 means a thing that puts men in fear rather than a thing that is wicked.

Observe what I command you this day: Adam Clarke reads the covenant as binding the LORD to drive out the nations and binding Israel to observe the commands of verses 11 to 26. Matthew Henry finds the wonders of verse 10 in Joshua, the Jordan dried up and the sun standing still. John Wesley ties the promise to the commands.

Exodus 34:12-13

Verse 10 has God making a covenant and verse 12 forbids Israel to make one, so the same word carries the promise and the prohibition two verses apart. The danger named is a snare, which is a trap a man walks into rather than one he chooses. Israel is told to break the altars and the images and cut down the groves, so the order is to remove the apparatus and not merely to stay away from it.

chop down their Asherah poles: The Israelites must tear down the altars and sacred stones of the land and chop down its Asherah poles, for in verse 14 the LORD is a jealous God. Albert Barnes notes that this is the first mention of the Asherah in Scripture. The same command returns at Deuteronomy 7:5.

Exodus 20:5 had God calling himself jealous, and here the word is given as a name, whose name is Jealous. The picture behind it is marriage rather than envy, which is why the next two verses speak of going a whoring and of taking their daughters for sons. Hosea and Jeremiah build long stretches of prophecy on the same figure.

Exodus 34:15-16

These two verses lay out a sequence rather than a single act, running from a treaty to their sacrifices, to an invitation, to eating, to marriage, and at last to sons who go a whoring after their gods. No step in that chain is a decision to change gods, and the last step falls on a generation that made none of the earlier ones. 1 Kings 11:1 to 11:8 tells the story of a king who walked the whole sequence.

take some of their daughters as brides for your sons: Verse 15 warns that the inhabitants of the land will invite Israel to eat their sacrifices, and the brides of verse 16 would lead the sons to their gods. Numbers 25:1 and 2 records this at Peor. Matthew Henry calls the way of sin downhill.

The word molten occurs first at Exodus 32:4, of the calf, and it comes back here in the one commandment the renewed covenant repeats on its own. Of the ten words given in chapter 20, this is the one the people had already broken while Moses was up the mountain receiving them. The renewal names the failure instead of passing over it.

From here to verse 26 the terms of the renewed covenant repeat what Exodus 23:14 to 23:19 had already given, so the second tables carry the same law as the first. The feast is fixed to Abib because that is the month they came out, which Exodus 13:4 states and Exodus 12:2 had made the head of the year. The calendar is anchored to an event rather than to a season.

Exodus 34:19-20

The claim on the firstborn goes back to the night in Egypt, where Exodus 13:2 said sanctify unto me all the firstborn and used the word sanctify for the first time in Scripture. The ass is redeemed with a lamb or else its neck is broken, so an unclean animal lives because a clean one dies in its place, and the same verse says all the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. Israel's sons are kept on the terms the passover set.

No one shall appear before Me empty-handed: The rule that no one appear before the LORD empty-handed closed the feast law of 23:15. John Gill applies it to the three feasts of this chapter, Unleavened Bread, Weeks and Ingathering, when all the males appear three times a year. Deuteronomy 16:17 sets the gift by what each can give.

The sabbath is restated with the obvious exemption closed, since earing time and harvest are the two seasons a farmer would say he could not spare a day. The word sabbath first occurs at Exodus 16:23, in the manna chapter, four chapters before the commandment at 20:8, so the practice was taught by events before it was given as law. Here it is repeated at the point where keeping it costs a crop.

Exodus 34:22-23

With unleavened bread at verse 18 this makes the three annual feasts, and verse 23 counts them, thrice in the year. The feast of weeks is the one Acts 2:1 names when the Spirit falls, since Pentecost is the Greek name for the fiftieth day counted from the wave sheaf. The feast of ingathering at the year's end is the one Leviticus 23:34 calls tabernacles.

all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD: The males appear at the feasts of verses 18 and 22. John Gill notes that the God of Israel is added here to the wording of 23:17. Matthew Henry reads the Lord GOD as calling for reverence, and the God of Israel as a covenant God to trust.

The command of verse 23 empties the farms and the borders three times a year, and this verse answers an objection nobody has raised yet. God undertakes to keep the land while the men are away, saying that no man shall desire it. Obedience is asked at the point where it looks like a risk, and the risk is the thing God says he will carry.

Exodus 34:25-26

The passover rules of Exodus 12:8 to 12:10 are restated in a line, no leaven with the blood and nothing left until morning. The ban on seething a kid in its mother's milk stands here for the second of three times in the Torah, with Exodus 23:19 before it and Deuteronomy 14:21 after. Rabbinic law from the Mishnah onward reads that threefold repetition as the ground for keeping meat and milk apart, a ruling worked out in the tractate Chullin of the Babylonian Talmud. Christian commentators have more often read the line as a ban on a particular Canaanite practice, and the two readings have long stood side by side.

Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil: John Calvin reads the firstfruits as a yearly reminder of Israel's adoption, with the land their inheritance and its food given to them as children. Deuteronomy 26:2 to 10 gives the basket and its confession.

Exodus 34:27-28

Moses is told to write, which Exodus 17:14 had first commanded of him over Amalek. The forty days without bread or water repeat the first ascent at Exodus 24:18, and Deuteronomy 9:9 and 9:18 count both fasts. Verse 28 says he wrote upon the tables, and readers have long divided over the subject, since verse 1 has God saying I will write and Deuteronomy 10:2 and 10:4 say the LORD wrote, while the nearest noun in verse 28 is Moses.

without eating bread or drinking water: Matthew Henry sets this fast beside Elijah's forty days on the road to Horeb and Christ's forty days in the wilderness. Augustine grounds the forty days of Lent in these three. Moses and Elijah later stand with Christ at the transfiguration, Matthew 17:3.

Exodus 34:29-30

when Moses came down from Mount Sinai: Moses comes down the mountain a second time carrying tables, and this time nothing gets broken. The shining is on the skin of his face and he does not know it, so the one man who cannot see the glory is the man carrying it. Israel had been afraid of the mountain at Exodus 20:18 and 20:19 and asked that God not speak to them directly, and now the same fear meets them on a man's face.

they were afraid to approach him: Adam Clarke traces the fear to the sin of the calf, still on the conscience of the people. John Wesley thinks they could not tell whether the radiant face was a sign of the LORD's favor or His anger. Sin makes men afraid of their friends, Matthew Henry says.

Exodus 34:31-32

Moses calls them back rather than letting the fear stand, and the order of return is Aaron and the rulers first, then all the children of Israel. Aaron made the calf in chapter 32, and he is the first man named coming near again. What Moses does with the light on his face is deliver commandments, so the glory is put to the work of getting the words to the people.

all the Israelites came near: Everything the LORD had told him on Mount Sinai reaches back past this chapter to the tabernacle instruction of chapters 25 to 31. Chapter 35 opens with that delivery, beginning with the Sabbath. Matthew Henry counts it an honour to deliver God's law to others, and Psalm 147:19 counts it Israel's privilege to receive it.

Exodus 34:33-35

The order in the text is that Moses speaks first and puts the vail on afterward, and he takes it off again whenever he goes in before the LORD. Paul takes the scene up at 2 Corinthians 3:7 to 3:18, where he writes that the vail lay over the reading of Moses and that in Christ it is taken away. He ends with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord and being changed, which is the New Testament reading this chapter for itself.

he would remove the veil until he came out: Moses removed the veil to speak with the LORD, and he told the Israelites what the LORD had commanded when he came out. John Wesley reads the verse through 2 Corinthians 3:16, where the veil is taken away whenever anyone turns to the Lord. The veil came off before the LORD.

So Moses would put the veil back over his face: John Gill reads the verse as a practice repeated each time Moses came out from speaking with the LORD, his face radiant again. Matthew Henry takes the veil as a figure of the covenant of Sinai, which covered much of Christ. Paul at 2 Corinthians 3:13 calls that radiance fading.