(9) I neither did eat bread nor drink water.--This fact is not related in Exodus concerning the first forty days which Moses spent in Mount Sinai "with his minister Joshua." It might be supposed or implied, but it is not recorded.

Verse 9. - The clause, Then I abode... water, is a parenthesis; the sentence runs on from. When I was gone, etc., to Then [not And] the Lord delivered unto me, etc.

9:7-29 That the Israelites might have no pretence to think that God brought them to Canaan for their righteousness, Moses shows what a miracle of mercy it was, that they had not been destroyed in the wilderness. It is good for us often to remember against ourselves, with sorrow and shame, our former sins; that we may see how much we are indebted to free grace, and may humbly own that we never merited any thing but wrath and the curse at God's hand. For so strong is our propensity to pride, that it will creep in under one pretence or another. We are ready to fancy that our righteousness has got for us the special favour of the Lord, though in reality our wickedness is more plain than our weakness. But when the secret history of every man's life shall be brought forth at the day of judgment, all the world will be proved guilty before God. At present, One pleads for us before the mercy-seat, who not only fasted, but died upon the cross for our sins; through whom we may approach, though self-condemned sinners, and beseech for undeserved mercy and for eternal life, as the gift of God in Him. Let us refer all the victory, all the glory, and all the praise, to Him who alone bringeth salvation.When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone,.... The tables of the law, the same law which forbid idolatry, and which they had lately heard from the mouth of God himself: even

the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you; which they had agreed unto, and solemnly promised they would observe and do, Exodus 24:7,

then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights; and this long stay was one reason of their falling into idolatry, not knowing what was become of him, Exodus 24:18.

I neither did eat bread nor drink water; all those forty days and nights, Exodus 34:28.