Chapter 34
God tells Moses to cut two new stone tablets, bring them up the mountain the next day, and that God will write on them again the words He previously wrote on the tablets that Moses broke. Moses is to come up alone this time - no Aaron or Joshua.
2026 - This verse:
1 The LORD said to Moses, "Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. [Exo 34:1 ESV].
This is a pretty good indicator that these rewritten tablets were exactly the same as the ones Moses broke. So we have the spoken 10, which were the 10 only. Then the first tablets which added information about construction of the Temple, sets up the office of high priest and priests, and defines what they are to wear and some of their duties. This third set I think we should see as duplicates of the second set.
God's covenant with Israel restated. This verse:
7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." [Exo 34:7 ESV]
This seems to contradict other passages - particularly in Ezekiel - where God says each is responsible for his own sin, not the sin of their parents or their children.
MSB note sends us back to Ex 20:6, where it says the same thing about the sins of the fathers being on the children. That note says that while the children are not responsible for what their parents do, while God does not "sentence" children for their parents crimes, the result of the parent's sins are still there for 3 or 4 generations. As in parents at that time who decided to worship idols. That is the example their children would see, and that is what the children would do. The apostasy of the parents turns into the apostasy of the children. They learn sin from their parents and they practice it. In our day, alcohol, drugs, abortion, homosexuality - parents attitudes about these things the Bible clearly labels as sin become the attitudes of their children. It takes generations to undo the error of this ungodly teaching.
Now THIS is a FB post!
2025 - Looked up a lot of these Hebrew verbs. I think I could make a case that the...no...What I want it to say, and what I sort of maneuver around to "think" it says, is that this is about "fathers" who are continuing in sin, who never repent. This is not about fathers who make a single mistake, one time, and it follows their heirs for three or four generations. I think this comes from the phrase "by no means leave the guilty unpunished". I think if you look at all those words - and it is a jumbled up mess in Hebrew, which I have no clue about anyway - the idea of continuing, unrepented sin on the part of the father is in view. God will not leave unrepentant sin unpunished. But what it seems to say is that he won't leave the children of such a father unpunished either. The scary version of this is that God is not obligated, even a tiny bit, to save anyone. No one at all. So if God chooses not to elect the offspring of idol worshipers let's say, God has not "guilt" in that decision. He can do that if he wants. And maybe that is the right way to look at it. Deep down, I'm pretty sure that is exactly the right way to look at it. Children earn their own condemnation, no matter the actions of their fathers. Ezekiel tells us that. And if the father is idolatrous, perhaps God chooses not to save the sinful children.
If so, JM is really reaching for an explanation that "softens the blow" of what God says here - which is unlike JM. A child raised in the home of a constantly drunken father will obviously be less likely to attend church regularly as a child than the child of say a Baptist minister. Less exposure to the gospel means fewer chances to be saved. It just does. It is a natural consequence. So perhaps in the same way that by the sin of one man all were condemned - sin because an inherited family characteristic - so by the sin of the head of one family, sin is more intensely passed on from father to child. That is consistent. There are always exceptions that God makes, for his own purposes. But the general truth of the matter is that sinners beget sinners. There are not many stories in the Bible of good sons born to bad fathers. There is a good daughter born to a pagan father in the story of Hagar. But do we ever see that with a man? Is there even one such story? Now that right there is a huge clue about whether the above in vs 8 ought to be deliberately softened, or in fact means exactly what it says it does, and that in an almost never excepted way. Hmm. I cannot think of a single exception.
Yet...if there were no exceptions, wouldn't godliness die out completely because over time, there are always those who reject God? Wouldn't godliness be self-extinguishing in a fallen world? There surely MUST BE exceptions...no...it lasts three or four generations, and then it can swing back. That's what it says...but we still lack stories in the Bible about the "return".
So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 34:28 ESV
This looks like it was Moses who rewrote the tablets.
2021 - In light of what we saw back in 33, where God had decided to send the angel to guide Israel to Canaan but not to go amongst them Himself, lest he kill them, but Moses pleads with God on behalf of the nation, we can see here in 34 that God relents, and agrees to travel with them. The covenant that they had pretty much already trashed with their worship of the golden calf, is renewed. Many of its details are restated, so there is no doubt what is being renewed, and no doubt that the requirements are the same on the part of the nation. You see this in the words of Moses at vs 9, pleading for pardon, and God's reply in vs 10 saying he will make the covenant. BUT, God also laid out in the preliminaries to these verses that He will "by no means clear the guilty". Nothing in the covenant is to be construed as removing guilt. The Old Covenant delays punishment, but never in any sense does it remove guilt. So chapter 34 is about renewal of the covenant spurned.
Moses comes down with his face shining of the glory of God, such that the people are afraid even to come near him.