WMM Bible Reading: Exodus 34

Exodus 34 - The Lord tells Moses to bring Him two new stones on which to re-write the “words” He gave him.  Moses climbs the mountain again alone, and the Lord passes before him, crying out, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless, but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!” (34:6-7) The two attributes—the Lord’s kindness and His justice—are the two things we can know about Him, the two things we must know about Him. Moses, in response, renews his request to have the Lord accompany them on their journey. The Lord promises to work marvels (34:10) among the people; but in return they must “keep the commandments I am giving you today” (34:11). 

This list of commandments, the post-apostacy set—called The Ten but clearly a different set from what Moses received in Exodus 20--is framed not by a reminder of the salvation from Egypt, but by a prospective view of the victories and challenges their entry into the Promised Land will bring.  Perhaps this story entered into the text after the Israelites had been a people in the Promised Land for a while, and had been unfaithful AGAIN—worshipping the golden calves of the Canaanite religion--and needed this particular temptation to be added to the Exodus story.

Preface: The Lord will drive out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites; but the Israelites must tear down the altars and smash their sacred pillars and poles. 

1.     They are to make no covenant (nor enter into marriages) with these people or the Israelites will end up ensnared in their forms of worship.

2.     No molten images are to be made.

3.     They shall keep the Passover.

4.     They shall dedicate to God all first-born.

5.     They shall keep the Sabbath.

6.     They shall keep the feast of Weeks and the feast of the Fruit Harvest

7.     Three times a year all the men shall come to worship the Lord

8.     They shall not offer the blood of sacrifice with leavened bread.

9.     They shall bring to the House of the Lord the first grains that are harvested

10.  They hall not boil a young sheep or goat in its mother’s milk (34:14-26). 

      

Moses stays another 40 days and nights; when he comes down “he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant (karan) while he conversed with the Lord. Later, in the Latin translation, the word ‘karan’ was rendered as ‘horned’—hence Michelangelo’s horned statue of Moses at the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli. It is very surprising to me that the connection to Jesus’s transfiguration was not made. This first “transfiguration” is certainly the backdrop against which Jesus’ is to be interpreted in Mark 9:2-3; Mt 17:2 and Luke 9:29. This radiance terrifies Aaron and others.  He puts a veil over his face, and thereafter takes it off only when he enters the Tent of Meeting to “converse” with the Lord (34:34). Paul refers to this in 2 Corinthians 17 when he interprets the veil as something that prevents the Jews from seeing in Christ a fulfillment of the Mosaic ‘ministration’ as Fox would call it.