Context & Key Themes
Exodus 34 is the renewal of the covenant after the golden calf catastrophe. God passes before Moses in the cleft of the rock and proclaims His name — the fullest self-revelation of the divine character in the Old Testament. New tablets are cut. The covenant is renewed. And Moses comes down from the mountain with a face so radiant from being in God’s presence that he has to veil it. The themes are divine mercy and covenant faithfulness surviving human failure, the character of God revealed in His own words, and the transforming effect of God’s presence on the person who enters it.
Key Verses
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.” — Exodus 34:6–7
“Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” — Exodus 34:29
Summary
God tells Moses to cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. God will write on them the words that were on the first tablets that Moses broke. Moses rises early, takes the two tablets, and goes up Mount Sinai. The Lord descends in the cloud and stands with Moses and proclaims the name of the Lord. The Lord passes before him and proclaims: the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 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 children’s children to the third and fourth generation. Moses bows his head and worships. He says: if I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.
God makes a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. All the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. He gives instructions: drive out the inhabitants before you. Do not make covenants with them. Tear down their altars and break their pillars. Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land lest they be a snare among you. Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
God restates the feast schedule: keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, present the firstborn of every womb, keep the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Ingathering. Three times in the year all males shall appear before the Lord. Do not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened. Do not let the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover remain until morning. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your ground to the house of the Lord. Do not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Moses is on the mountain forty days and forty nights, eating no bread and drinking no water. He writes the words of the covenant on the tablets. When he comes down with the two tablets his face is shining with the glory of speaking with God — and Moses does not know it. When Aaron and the people see Moses they are afraid to come near him. Moses calls them and speaks to them. After he finishes speaking, he puts a veil over his face. Whenever he goes in before the Lord to speak, he takes the veil off until he comes out. Then he veils his face again until he goes in again.
Reflection
The proclamation of the divine name in verses 6 and 7 is the most complete verbal self-revelation of God’s character in the entire Old Testament. These thirteen attributes — merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, abounding in faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, forgiving transgression, forgiving sin, but by no means clearing the guilty — are quoted and referenced throughout the rest of Scripture more than any other passage. The prophets return to it. The Psalms echo it. Jesus embodies it. This is God telling Moses exactly who He is, in words, directly, in the aftermath of Israel’s worst failure. The self-revelation comes not when they deserve it but when they need it most.
The renewal of the covenant here is an act of pure grace. Israel broke the covenant in chapter 32. They have no legal standing to ask for its renewal. Moses asks anyway, based not on Israel’s merit but on God’s character: you are a God who forgives iniquity. You are gracious. Take us as your inheritance. God responds with renewed covenant terms, not because Israel earned it but because He is exactly what He says He is.
Moses’s shining face is one of the most iconic images in Exodus. He has been in the presence of God and it has left a mark — visible, physical, involuntary. He does not know his face shines. The transformation is real but not self-aware. Paul will use this passage in 2 Corinthians 3 to contrast the fading glory of the old covenant with the surpassing and permanent glory of the new. But the principle is the same across both: time spent in the presence of God changes the person who spends it. That change is not always immediately visible to the person themselves. It is visible to those who see them.