Hello and welcome to today’s exciting Bible study on Exodus 34. In this chapter, we will read and study about the new tablets, the renewed covenant, and Moses’s shining face. According to biblical scholars, the events of Exodus 34 occurred around 1446 B.C.
As usual, I encourage you to turn to Exodus 34 in your Bible. Kindly invite the Holy Spirit to guide you as you read and study these chapters with me. I mention this in all the Bible Studies because it is only through the Holy Spirit that we get fresh revelation and knowledge to understand the word of God. No one else can teach you better than the Holy Spirit Himself. I am using the New King James Version (NKJV) of the Bible, just in case you want to know.
Backstory on Exodus 33
In Exodus 33, we read that The Lord instructed Moses and the Israelites to leave Sinai and journey to the land of milk and honey. He also said that He would send His Angel ahead of them, but that He would not go personally, lest He consume them along the way because of their stubbornness.
Moses set up a tabernacle of meeting outside the camp as a place of meeting with the Lord. When he entered the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud descended upon it, and the Lord spoke to Moses from the cloud. He spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.
Moses then asked for God’s presence to lead them to their destination. God assured Moses that He knows him by name and that He has found favor in His sight. Moses further requested that God reveal His glory. The Lord responded that no man can see His face and live. Therefore, He placed Moses in the cleft of a rock and covered him with His hand as He passed by. Afterward, He removed His hand so that Moses could see His back, but not His face.
Now, without any further delay, let us study together and learn what Exodus 34 is about, shall we?
Exodus 34 Summary
The Lord instructed Moses to make new tablets of stone. He said that He would write on them the same words that were on the first tablets. He told Moses to meet Him at the top of the Mount Sinai in the morning. No one was to accompany Moses on the mountain, and no flocks or herds were to graze near it. Moses followed the Lord’s instructions.
The Lord descended in a cloud and stood with Moses, proclaiming His name. He passed before Moses and declared that He is The Lord God and revealed His character.
Moses quickly bowed his head to the ground and worshiped the Lord. He then asked the Lord to go among the people, despite their stubbornness, and to pardon their iniquity and sin, taking them as His inheritance.
The Lord spoke to Moses, indicating that He was establishing a covenant with the people. He vowed to perform wonders that had never been witnessed on earth or among any other nation, so that everyone would see His deeds. He instructed Moses and the Israelites to be attentive in following the commands He was providing them that day.
Warning against worship of foreign gods
The Lord mentioned that He was driving out the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites ahead of them. He warned them not to form a covenant with the gods of these foreign nations, as it would trap them. He commanded that the Israelites destroy their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, and cut down the wooden images of the peoples He was removing from the land.
The Lord directed them to have no other gods besides Him, for He, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. He cautioned against being unfaithful to Him by worshiping other deities or offering sacrifices to them. He also warned against marrying foreigners, as it may ensnare them, causing them to turn their hearts toward other gods and worship them.
The Feasts
The Lord instructed them not to create any molded idols for themselves and to observe the feast of unleavened bread in the month of Abib, because that was the month they exited Egypt. Then He gave instructions about the first born.
No one should come before Him empty-handed. People are to work for six days and rest on the seventh day during plowing and harvesting. They are to celebrate the Feast of Weeks, the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s conclusion. Three times a year, all men are to present themselves before the Lord, for He will drive out nations before them and expand their territory. No man shall desire their land when all the men of Israel go up to meet the Lord three times a year.
No one is to offer the blood of His sacrifice with leaven, nor should any part of the Feast of the Passover sacrifice be left until morning.
They shall bring the first of their firstfruits from the land to the house of the Lord. They must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. The Lord commanded Moses to document these words because He established a covenant with Moses and Israel in accordance with all He proclaimed. Thus, Moses was with the Lord for forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. The Lord inscribed the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments, on the tablets.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of Testimony, he did not realize that the skin of his face shone while he spoke with the Lord. When Aaron and the Israelites saw Moses and his shining face, they were afraid to approach him.
Moses spoke with Aaron and the rulers of the congregation, and then he delivered to the Israelites the commandments that the Lord had spoken on Mount Sinai. When he finished speaking with them, he placed a veil over his face. He would remove the veil whenever he went to meet the Lord. However, when he spoke to the children of Israel, he put the veil back on his face until he went to speak with the Lord again.
Exodus 34 Commentary
1. Exodus 34:1-3
After Moses pleaded with God to forgive the people’s iniquity, God instructed him to carve two new tablets of stone like the first ones, on which the Lord had inscribed the commandments that Moses broke at the foot of the mountain. The term “tablets” brings to mind something interesting. In today’s world, a tablet refers to a portable, flat computer with a touch-sensitive screen, serving as a hybrid between smartphones and laptops. However, the original tablets were not electronic devices but stone slabs on which God wrote the Ten Commandments. I can’t help but wonder why modern technology chose this specific name for their devices.
2. Exodus 34:5-7
The Lord revealed His character as good and gracious, merciful and long-suffering. He revealed Himself as the righteous judge who does not clear the guilty and visits the iniquity of men to their children and children’s children till the third and fourth generations. Many times humans are quick to judge God. They blame God for all the bad things in the world. When we blame God we question His goodness and we question His character. He has clearly revealed His character here, in this chapter, through His own words. When we are tempted to question God we slander His name and character. However, we clearly know who the slanderer is. It is the devil. His goal is to make God’s character bad in human eyes so that many reject Him. This is what he did with Eve at the garden. He made Eve doubt God’s character as if God was hiding something from them and then she succumbed to the deception and ate of the fruit and gave it to Adam too.
3. Exodus 34:29-35
I want to make a connection of Moses’s shining face and the veil in this chapter to 2 Corinthians 3:7-10, where Apostle Paul discusses the old covenant, which was engraved on stones and was glorious. This glory was evident in Moses’ countenance.
The new covenant, which we have as believers, is far more glorious than the old covenant because it is the ministry of the Spirit. The old covenant led to death and brought condemnation, as the Ten Commandments revealed what sin is. But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. If the old covenant, which was passing away, was glorious, then what remains—the new and permanent covenant—is much more glorious. This is a better covenant, one that does not condemn us, as our judgment has been borne by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The veil is something that causes a separation. For example, the veil was divider between the holy place and the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle (Exodus 26:33). Spiritually, the veil has now been removed after Jesus Christ arrived on the scene. However, the Pharisees and Sadducees couldn’t look beyond the veil of the law (The Ten Commandments) and the old covenant at Christ who took on flesh and lived among them. Unfortunately, even today, some of the modern-day Israelites still haven’t had the veil on their eyes removed to the truth of the Messiah – Jesus Christ. They are still waiting for the Messiah. And, there are many more among the gentile nations that are blind to Christ as they are deceived into worshipping idols and pagan gods.
Once again we see through this study on Exodus 34, how everything in Scripture ultimately points to Jesus. The old covenant demonstrates our inability to be perfect, which led people to look forward to a better covenant which came through Jesus christ. As believers the old covenant does not apply to us anymore. We are new covenant believers as we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and what He had done for us.
Exodus 34 Lessons/Revelations
What can we learn from Exodus 34?
God is a covenant-keeping God
Even though the people of Israel sinned against God by creating a golden calf, He still accepted them as His inheritance due to Moses’s intercession. He even rewrote the covenant on new tablets and laid out the rules they were to follow. True to His character, He is long-suffering and just, and in His mercy, He established the covenant again.
Covenant is fundamentally about relationship, and we relate to God through covenant. While humans can break covenant, God never does. A covenant relationship involves a mutual exchange, typically practiced in various cultures around the world. However, in our covenant with God through the blood of Jesus, He took everything bad from us and has given us everything good to live on Earth and everlasting life.
Conclusion
This concludes the bible study on Exodus 34. I hope you enjoyed this free bible study and found it helpful in your Bible study journey. Feel free to share it with your friends and family. Also, share your thoughts and what the Holy Spirit has revealed to you about Exodus 34. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Until next time!