Exodus 34

Chap. XXXIV. Ver. 1—17. The covenant renewed.—Moses was now commanded to prepare blank tablets, whereon the Lord promises to write again the ten commands. Upon his taking them up, as ordered, on the next day, the Lord fulfilled his promise made on the preceding day. He caused the proclamation of all his goodness to pass before him, and announced his name as “the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,” &c. “keeping mercy for thousands,” that is, thousands of generations, (as (Exodus 20:6).) and that will by no means clear (the guilty.) The two last words, it may be remarked, being in italic, are supplementary; and if, instead of “the guilty,” we insert “the wicked,”

i.e. the impenitent; if we fail of the precise sense, we shall have one in perfect harmony with the context and whole tenor of Scripture; and also with the best Jewish expositors: for the Chaldee explains it, of “them that turn not;” and the Jerusalem Targum applies it to the day of judgment, when the impenitent only shall be condemned. The following caution, not to form alliances of any kind with idolaters, was very important, considering the proneness of the Israelites to this crime, and the temptations held out by the heathen to partake of their sacrifices, which were frequently accompanied with luxurious feasts, and licentious sports. But the closing article, ‘Thou shalt make no molten gods,”

has an evident reference to their golden calf. The direction to destroy their statues and their altars may be thought to savour of a barbarous state, in the eyes of those who admire ‘the elegant mythology of Greece and Rome.” We have certainly not now the same reason for destroying the vestiges of pagan antiquity as the Jews had; but it deserves to be considered, whether many are not betrayed into heathenish principles, or popish superstition, by their enthusiastic attachment to the poetry of the classics, and the monuments of ancient art. Ver. 27—35. Moses comes down from the mount.—As it was expressly said in the beginning of the chapter, that the Lord wrote the commandments upon this set of tables, as well as upon the former, what Moses is here commanded to write, must either have been the additional precepts here recorded, or a transcript of the commands for the use of the people, which was highly necessary.

The pronoun “he,” however, in the 28th verse, may, we conceive, be applied to the Lord more properly than to Moses, and then agrees perfectly with the first verse of the chapter. When Moses came down from the mount, we are told his face shone with such a radiancy, (though at first he was not aware of it,) that Aaron and the people were afraid to come near him, until he put a vail over it, which he took off when he returned into the divine presence, and resumed when he came down again to speak to the people. St. Paul, alluding to this circumstance, and comparing the dispensation of Moses with that of Jesus, mentions it as proving the former to be glorious in itself, yet as having no glory compared with the superior glory of the gospel.

And whereas Moses wore a vail, symbolical of the darkness of the dispensation of which he was minister, the ministers of the New Testament use no disguise, but preach the gospel with all simplicity and plainness. But the Jews, according to the apostle, had the vail still; not on their faces, as Moses had, but upon their hearts, until such time as it should please God to remove it, and give them to see “the light of the glory of God, as shining in the face of Jesus Christ.” Such seems to be the apostle’s reasoning in the 3d chapter of his 2d Epistle to the Corinthians. This history, also, in a moral view, affords a reflection too useful to be omitted. The face of Moses shone so as to dazzle all who saw it, while he himself knew it not.

Happy is it, when such is the case with the Christian. Much communion with God will communicate a glory to his character, which the good man himself will be the last to discover.

Notes on the verses

Chap. XXXIV. Ver. 7. Will by no means clear.—Hebrew, “* Clearing he will not clear.” This expression occurs in two other places. In (Numbers 14:18), it is rendered as here; but in Nahum i. 3. in the sense above suggested: “He will not at all acquit the wicked.” Some of the Hebrew doctors explain it, “* He cleanses those that repent, but those who are unwilling to repent, he does not cleanse.”

Ver. 18-26. The feast, &c.—These verses are only repetitions. Compare (Exodus 23)throughout. See also (Exodus 13)and xxii.

Ver. 29. The skin of his face shone.—The Hebrew word (Karan) being applied both to the shooting forth of rays of light, and to the shooting out of horns from young animals, the Vulgate, by a curious mistake, has represented Moses as wearing horns—‘the skin of his face was horned.”

And the painters have, in consequence, represented him ever since with two or three long rays of light, like horns, instead of a surrounding glory.