Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
The Covenant Renewed
Exodus 34:10-28
10 He said, “Behold, I make a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been worked in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of Yahweh; for it is an awesome thing that I do with you. · WEB
The covenant is remade on the same terms, and the clauses selected for repetition are the ones the calf had broken.
Behold, I make a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been worked in all the earth, nor in any nation Exodus 34:10.
The agreement is restored, and the initiative is entirely God's. Israel is not asked to reapply, and no penance is imposed. The covenant that had been legally void since the tablets hit the ground is simply made again.
The stipulations that follow are a selection rather than a new code, and the selection is pointed. Every one of them addresses the failure that had just occurred. You shall make no cast idols for yourselves Exodus 34:17 restates the commandment the calf broke, in the exact vocabulary of the calf. And around it stand the warnings about the land they are entering: no covenant with its inhabitants, their altars broken down, no marriages with their daughters Exodus 34:12–16.
The reason given for the severity is a marriage word. You shall worship no other god; for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God Exodus 34:14. The jealousy of Scripture is not the insecurity of a rival; it is the response of a husband to unfaithfulness, and the same paragraph uses the language of prostitution for what happens when Israel adopts the worship of its neighbors. Indifference would not be a higher virtue here.
The festival calendar is restated Exodus 34:18–23, and one line inside it is expanded from its earlier form. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest Exodus 34:21. The two exceptions a farmer would certainly make are named and refused. Plowing and harvest are the weeks when a lost day cannot be recovered, and they are precisely where the command is applied.
A promise is attached to the pilgrimage requirement that answers the obvious objection to it: neither shall any man desire your land when you go up to appear before Yahweh, your God, three times in the year Exodus 34:24. Three times a year the country's fighting men would leave their farms undefended. The guarantee covers what obedience costs.
He was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water Exodus 34:28.
A second forty days, with no food or water, immediately after the first. And the closing clause names what was written: the words of the covenant, the ten commandments — the only place in Scripture where the ten are counted, and they are distinguished here from everything else spoken at this mountain.
settled What this mark means