For Teaching

Exodus 34: What the Passage Says

113 claims across 35 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 34 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Moses to cut two new stone tablets like the ones he broke and to come up Mount Sinai alone. The LORD passes before Moses and proclaims his own name and character, and Moses bows and asks the LORD to go with the people, pardon them, and take them as his inheritance. The LORD makes a covenant, promising wonders and driving out the nations, and gives commands about avoiding treaties and other gods, about the yearly feasts, the firstborn, the sabbath, and sacrifices. Moses stays forty days and forty nights, writes the words of the covenant, and comes down with his face shining, so that he wears a veil except when he speaks with the LORD or repeats the LORD's words to Israel.

Claim by Claim

34:1
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to cut two stone tablets like the first ones.
- The LORD said he would write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets.
- The LORD said that Moses had broken the first tablets.
34:2
- The LORD told Moses to be ready by morning.
- The LORD told Moses to come up Mount Sinai in the morning.
- The LORD told Moses to present himself there to him on the top of the mountain.
34:3
- The LORD said no man was to come up with Moses.
- The LORD said no man was to be seen anywhere on the mountain.
- The LORD said the flocks and herds were not to graze in front of that mountain.
34:4
- Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones.
- Moses rose early in the morning.
- Moses went up Mount Sinai.
- Moses did this as the LORD had commanded him.
- Moses took the two stone tablets in his hand.
34:5
- The LORD came down in the cloud.
- The LORD stood with Moses there.
- The name of the LORD was proclaimed there, and the text does not make clear whether the LORD or Moses proclaimed it.
34:6
- The LORD passed by in front of him.
- The LORD called out.
- The proclamation named the LORD, the LORD, God.
- The proclamation said God is compassionate.
- The proclamation said God is gracious.
- The proclamation said God is slow to anger.
- The proclamation said God is abundant in loyal love and faithfulness.
34:7
- God keeps loyal love for thousands.
- God forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.
- God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.
- God visits the iniquity of fathers upon the children and upon the children's children.
- God visits that iniquity to the third and fourth generation.
34:8
- Moses hurried.
- Moses bowed his head to the ground.
- Moses worshiped.
34:9
- Moses said, if he had found favor in the LORD's sight.
- Moses asked the Lord to go in the midst of them.
- Moses said the people are a stiff-necked people.
- Moses asked the Lord to pardon their iniquity and their sin.
- Moses asked the Lord to take them as his inheritance.
34:10
- The LORD said he was making a covenant.
- The LORD said he would do wonders before all Moses' people.
- The LORD said such wonders had not been done in all the earth or among any nation.
- The LORD said all the people among whom Moses lives would see the work of the LORD.
- The LORD said the thing he was doing with Moses is awesome.
34:11
- The LORD told Moses to observe what he commands him that day.
- The LORD said he was driving out before them the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
34:12
- The LORD warned them not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land they were entering.
- The LORD warned that such a covenant would become a snare in their midst.
34:13
- They were to tear down the inhabitants' altars.
- They were to smash the inhabitants' sacred standing stones.
- They were to cut down the inhabitants' Asherah poles.
34:14
- They were not to bow down to any other god.
- The LORD's name is Jealous.
- The LORD is a jealous God.
34:15
- They were not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land.
- The inhabitants prostitute themselves after their gods.
- The inhabitants sacrifice to their gods.
- An inhabitant would invite them.
- They would eat of his sacrifice.
34:16
- They would take some of the inhabitants' daughters for their sons.
- Those daughters prostitute themselves after their gods.
- Those daughters would make their sons prostitute themselves after those gods.
34:17
- They were not to make molten gods for themselves.
34:18
- They were to keep the feast of unleavened bread.
- They were to eat unleavened bread seven days.
- This was as the LORD had commanded them.
- This was at the appointed time in the month Abib.
- They came out of Egypt in the month Abib.
34:19
- Everything that first opens the womb belongs to the LORD.
- Every firstborn male among their livestock, whether of ox or of sheep, belongs to the LORD.
34:20
- The firstborn of a donkey is to be redeemed with a sheep.
- If it is not redeemed, its neck is to be broken.
- Every firstborn of their sons is to be redeemed.
- No one is to appear before the LORD empty-handed.
34:21
- They were to work six days.
- They were to rest on the seventh day.
- They were to rest even in plowing time and in harvest.
34:22
- They were to keep the feast of weeks, with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
- They were to keep the feast of ingathering at the turn of the year.
34:23
- Three times a year all their males were to appear before the Lord, the LORD, the God of Israel.
34:24
- The LORD said he would dispossess nations before them.
- The LORD said he would enlarge their borders.
- The LORD said no man would covet their land when they go up to appear before the LORD their God three times a year.
34:25
- They were not to offer the blood of the LORD's sacrifice along with anything leavened.
- The sacrifice of the feast of Passover was not to be left until morning.
34:26
- They were to bring the first of the firstfruits of their ground to the house of the LORD their God.
- They were not to boil a young goat in its mother's milk.
34:27
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to write these words.
- The LORD said that according to these words he had made a covenant with Moses and with Israel.
34:28
- He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights.
- He ate no bread.
- He drank no water.
- He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments, and the text does not say plainly whether Moses or the LORD did the writing.
34:29
- Moses came down from Mount Sinai.
- The two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hand as he came down from the mountain.
- The skin of Moses' face sent out rays because of his speaking with him.
- Moses did not know that the skin of his face sent out rays.
34:30
- Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses.
- The skin of Moses' face sent out rays.
- They were afraid to come near him.
34:31
- Moses called to them.
- Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him.
- Moses spoke to them.
34:32
- Afterward all the children of Israel came near.
- Moses commanded them all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.
34:33
- Moses finished speaking with them.
- Moses put a veil over his face.
34:34
- Whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out.
- Moses would come out.
- Moses would tell the children of Israel what he had been commanded.
34:35
- The children of Israel saw the face of Moses.
- The skin of Moses' face sent out rays.
- Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

34:1: The first set of tablets was smashed by Moses in chapter 32, when he came down and found the people worshiping the gold calf. "Tablets" here are flat slabs of stone, the ordinary writing surface for a permanent public document.
34:2: Mount Sinai is a mountain in the desert between Egypt and the land of Canaan. Israel camped at the foot of it for about a year.
34:3: The whole mountain was set apart while God was there. Not even a stray sheep was allowed to wander onto it.
34:5: Where the text prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has the personal name of Israel's God, four consonants usually written YHWH. Jews came to avoid saying it aloud, reading "the Lord" instead, and English translations follow that custom with the capitals. "Proclaimed the name" means announced who he is, not merely said a name aloud.
34:6: "Goodness and truth" translates two Hebrew words that are hard to carry over. The first covers loyal, generous commitment to someone you are bound to; the second covers reliability, being someone whose word holds. Together they describe steady, dependable faithfulness rather than abstract virtue.
34:7: "Keeping mercy for thousands" is ambiguous in Hebrew and in the English: it can mean thousands of people or, more likely given the contrast with "the third and fourth generation," thousands of generations. "He brings the punishment... on the children" uses a Hebrew idiom, literally "visiting" the wrongdoing, the consequences of one generation's acts landing on those who come after.
34:8: To worship is to show God how great he is. Bowing your head to the ground was one way to do it.
34:9: "Stubborn people" is literally "stiff-necked," the image of an ox that will not turn when the yoke is pulled. "Take us as your own possession" uses the word for an inherited allotment of land, the permanent share a family holds and does not sell; Moses is asking God to claim the people as that kind of permanent holding.
34:10: A covenant is a formal binding agreement, like a treaty between a ruler and a subject people, with stated terms and obligations on both sides, not a mood or a feeling. "Fearsome" translates a word meaning awe-inspiring, something that makes onlookers draw back; it does not mean cruel.
34:11: These are the peoples living in Canaan, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, before Israel entered it. Lists like this one are stock phrases in Hebrew for "the existing inhabitants," and the number and order of names vary from list to list.
34:12: The "agreement" here is a political treaty of the ordinary ancient kind, which was sworn in the names of both sides' gods and normally sealed by intermarriage and shared meals at a shrine. That is why the ban on treaties runs straight into verses about sacrifices and marriages.
34:13: The "sacred stones" are standing stones, upright pillars set up at a place of worship to mark a god's presence. "Asherah poles" were wooden objects, probably poles or stylized trees, associated with the Canaanite goddess Asherah. Both were standard furniture of a local shrine, along with the altar.
34:14: The Hebrew word rendered "jealous" is used of a husband's or wife's exclusive claim, and also of fierce zeal for something one is committed to. It is about an exclusive relationship being violated, not about petty envy of someone else's advantages.
34:15: "Prostitute themselves" is a stock Hebrew image for worshiping other gods: the covenant is pictured as a marriage, so going to another god is unfaithfulness. Eating from a sacrifice is the point of the warning, in the ancient world an animal offered to a god was then eaten as a shared meal, and joining the meal meant joining the worship.
34:16: Marriage between families was the normal way treaties were sealed and kept alive across generations, so a ban on marrying into these households is also a ban on the alliances that came with them.
34:17: "Gods of cast metal" means images made by pouring molten metal into a mold, the technique used for the gold calf in chapter 32.
34:18: Bread was raised with a lump of old fermented dough kept back from the last batch; "unleavened" bread has none of it, and can be made in a hurry. The seven-day festival recalls a departure from Egypt too rushed for the dough to rise. Abib is the first month of the Hebrew year, in the early spring, at the barley harvest; after the exile it was usually called Nisan.
34:19: The claim on the firstborn covers the first male offspring of any mother, animal or human. Firstborn animals were sacrificed; the rule assumes the widespread ancient idea that the first yield of anything (crop, flock, family) belongs to the god who gave it.
34:20: "Buy back" translates "redeem": paying a substitute so the original is released from the claim on it. A donkey could not be sacrificed, so a lamb was killed in its place; if the owner would not pay that price, the donkey was killed but not offered. Sons were always bought back, never sacrificed. "Empty-handed" means arriving at the sanctuary without an offering.
34:21: Plowing and harvest were the two points in the farming year when a lost day cost the most. Naming them makes the point that the weekly rest has no exemption for urgent work.
34:22: The Feast of Weeks fell seven weeks after the start of the barley harvest, at the wheat harvest, later known by its Greek name, Pentecost, meaning "fiftieth." "Firstfruits" are the first-picked portion of a crop, brought to the sanctuary before the rest is used. The Feast of Ingathering came in the autumn when the fruit and olive crops were gathered in and the agricultural year turned over; it is elsewhere called the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles.
34:23: The three festivals just named required travel to the sanctuary, so these are pilgrimage feasts. "All your males" means the adult men, who represented their households; women and children were not obliged to make the journey. "Lord GOD" here renders a Hebrew pairing of the word for master with the divine name.
34:24: The promise answers the obvious objection to verse 23: with the men away three times a year, farms and villages stood undefended. "Want to take your land" is literally "covet", set eyes on it with intent to seize it.
34:25: Fermentation was associated with decay, so nothing leavened could accompany a blood offering. The Passover animal had to be eaten the same night and any remainder destroyed, rather than kept, a rule about the meat not lingering past the festival, not about storage in general.
34:26: "The house of the LORD" means the sanctuary, at this point the portable tent described in the surrounding chapters, and later the temple in Jerusalem. The ban on boiling a young goat in its mother's milk is not explained anywhere in the text; suggestions include a Canaanite ritual being avoided, or revulsion at using a mother's milk to cook her own young. Much later Jewish law built the separation of meat and dairy on this line.
34:27: "After the tenor of these words" means in accordance with these terms. "Tenor" here means the drift or substance of what has just been said.
34:28: "He wrote" is ambiguous in the Hebrew, as it is in English: verse 1 has God writing on the tablets, verse 27 has Moses told to write, and the subject here is not specified. "The Ten Commandments" is literally "the ten words", the Hebrew term is for sayings or statements, and this is where the traditional count of ten comes from.
34:29: "The testimony" is the covenant terms themselves, treated as sworn evidence of the agreement, hence tablets of the testimony. The Hebrew verb for "shone" is built on the noun for "horn," apparently meaning to send out rays; an early Latin translation took it as "grew horns," which is why medieval and Renaissance art shows Moses with horns. The person Moses had been talking with is the LORD.
34:31: These leaders were the men who spoke for the family groups of Israel.
34:33: The Hebrew leaves the timing open: it can mean Moses veiled his face only after he had finished speaking, or that he kept it veiled while speaking. Verse 34 favors the first, since he removes the veil to go in and speaks unveiled when he comes out.

Read Exodus 34