34 The Lord said to Moses, Cut two tables of stone like the first, and I will write upon these tables the words that were on the first tables, which you broke.
2 Be ready and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain.
3 And no man shall come up with you, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mountain; neither let flocks or herds feed before that mountain.
4 So Moses cut two tables of stone like the first, and he rose up early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took [a]in his hand two tables of stone.
5 And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.
6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord! the Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.
8 And Moses made haste to bow his head toward the earth and worshiped.
9 And he said, If now I have found favor and loving-kindness in Your sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray You, go in the midst of us, although it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your inheritance.
10 And the Lord said, Behold, I lay down [afresh the terms of the mutual agreement between Israel and Me] a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels (wonders, miracles) such as have not been wrought or created in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord; for it is a terrible thing [fearful and full of awe] that I will do with you.
11 Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I drive out before you the Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite.
12 Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant or mutual agreement with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in the midst of you.
13 But you shall destroy their altars, dash in pieces their pillars (obelisks, images), and cut down their Asherim [symbols of the goddess Asherah];
14 For you shall worship no other god; for the Lord, Whose name is Jealous, is a jealous (impassioned) God,
15 Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they play the harlot after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and one invites you, you eat of his food sacrificed to idols,
16 And you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters play the harlot after their gods and make your sons play the harlot after their gods.
17 You shall make for yourselves no molten gods.
18 The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt.
19 All the males that first open the womb among your livestock are Mine, whether ox or sheep.
20 But the firstling of a donkey [an unclean beast] you shall redeem with a lamb or kid, and if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none of you shall appear before Me empty-handed.
21 Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest [on the Sabbath].
22 You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.
23 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.
24 For I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither shall any man desire [and molest] your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.
25 You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning.
26 The first of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.
27 And the Lord said to Moses, Write these words, for after the purpose and character of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of the Testimony in his hand, he did not know that the skin of his face shone and sent forth beams by reason of his speaking with the Lord.
30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they feared to come near him.
31 But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and [he] talked with them.
32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all the Lord had said to him in Mount Sinai.
33 And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.
34 But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, [b]he took the veil off until he came out. And he came out and told the Israelites what he was commanded.
35 The Israelites saw the face of Moses, how the skin of it shone; and Moses put the veil on his face again until he went in to speak with God.
Footnotes
- Exodus 34:4 The two tables of stone are believed to have been pocket-size, easily carried in one hand. The pictures of Moses carrying tombstone-size tables are the result of the misconception of artists, and are not supported by the Bible.
- Exodus 34:34 The apostle Paul expressly refers to this incident when he says that we all may, with unveiled faces, behold the glory of the Lord, and be transformed (II Cor. 3:13-18). That blessed vision, which of old was given only to the great leader of Israel, is now within reach of each individual believer. The Gospel has no fences to keep the crowd off the mount of vision; the lowliest and most unworthy of its children may pass upward where the shining glory is to be seen. “We all... are changed” (F. B. Meyer, Moses, the Servant of God).