XXXIV.

PREPARATIONS FOR A RENEWAL OF THE COVENANT.

(1-4) Before the covenant could be formally reestablished, before Israel could be replaced in the position forfeited by the idolatry of the golden calf, it was necessary that the conditions on which God consented to establish His covenant with them should be set forth afresh. Moses had asked for the return of God's favour, but had said nothing of these conditions. It is God who insists on them. "Hew thee two tables." The moral law must be delivered afresh--delivered in its completeness--exactly as at the first (Exodus 34:1), and even the ceremonial law must be reimposed in its main items (Exodus 34:12-26), or no return to favour is possible. Hence Moses is summoned once more to the top of Sinai, where the Law is to be delivered afresh to him, and is ordered to bring with him tables of stone like the former ones, to receive their written contents from God's hand.

(1) Hew thee two tables.--Something is always lost by sin, even when it is forgiven. The first tables were "the work of God" (Exodus 32:16). the second were hewn by the hand of Moses.

Of stone.--Literally, of stones--hewn, i.e., out of two separate stones, which could not be said of the first tables, since none knew how God had fashioned them.

I will write.--It is quite clear, though some have maintained the contrary, that the second tables, equally with the first, were inscribed "with the finger of God." (Comp. Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 10:2; Deuteronomy 10:4.) It is also quite clear that exactly the same words were written on each.

Upon these tables.--Heb., upon the tables.

Verse 1. - Hew thee two tables of stone. Literally, "of stones" - two separate tables, i.e., made of two separate stones. Moses is required to do this with strict justice, since it was by his act that the former tables were broken (Exodus 32:19). Upon these tables. Literally," upon the tables," which has exactly the same force. The words that were in the first tables. It is quite true that we have not yet been explicitly told what these words were. (See Exodus 31:18; Exodus 32:15, 16, 19.) It has been left to our natural intelligence to understand that they must have been the "ten words" uttered in the ears of all the people amid the thunders of Sinai, as recorded in Exodus 20:1-19, which are the evident basis of all the later legislation. We have, however, in ver. 28, and still more plainly in Deuteronomy 10:4, and Deuteronomy 5:22, the desired statement. The fiction of a double decalogue, invented by Goethe and supported by Hitzig, and even Ewald, is absolutely without foundation in fact.

34:1-4 When God made man in his own image, the moral law was written in his heart, by the finger of God, without outward means. But since the covenant then made with man was broken, the Lord has used the ministry of men, both in writing the law in the Scriptures, and in writing it in the heart. When God was reconciled to the Israelites, he ordered the tables to be renewed, and wrote his law in them. Even under the gospel of peace by Christ, the moral law continues to bind believers. Though Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet not from the commands of it. The first and the best evidence of the pardon of sin, and peace with God, is the writing the law in the heart.And the Lord said unto Moses,.... Out of the cloudy pillar, at the door of the tabernacle, where he had been conversing with him in the most friendly manner, as related in the preceding chapter:

hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first; of the same form, and of the same dimensions, and it may be of the same sort of stone, which perhaps was marble, there being great plenty of that kind on Mount Sinai. Now Moses being ordered to hew these tables, whereas the former were the work of God himself, as well as the writing, shows that the law was to be the ministration of Moses, and be ordained in the hand of him as a mediator, who had been praying and interceding for the people; and as a token of the reconciliation made, the tables were to be renewed, yet with some difference, that there might be some remembrance of their crime, and of their loss by it, not having the law on tables of stone, which were the work of God, but which were the work of man:

and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest; the writing of these was by the Lord himself, as the former, shows that the law itself was of God, though the tables were hewn by Moses, and that he would have it known and observed as such; and the same being written on these tables, as on the former, shows the unchangeableness of the law of God, as given to the people of Israel, that he would have nothing added to it, or taken from it; and the writing of it over again may have respect to the reinscribing it on the hearts of his people in regeneration, according to the tenor of the new covenant: the phrase, "which thou brakest", is not used as expressing any displeasure at Moses for that act of his, but to describe the former tables; and the breaking of them might not be the effect of passion, at least of any criminal passion, but of zeal for the glory of God, and the honour of his law, which was broken by the Israelites, and therefore unworthy of it; and might be according to the counsel of the divine will, and the secret direction of his providence.