New Tablets, the Same Covenant

“Hew” is pesal, the root of pesel, the graven image of 4:16: the same verb for carving idols and for cutting the covenant’s stone. In Exodus the ark is built later by Bezalel (37:1); here Moses makes one before he climbs. Rashi solved it with a temporary ark, which is his harmonising, not the text’s.

“Which thou brakest” records the breaking without a word of blame. The Talmud (Shabbat 87a) went further and heard approval in the phrase, playing on the Hebrew as “well done that you broke them”. That is a rabbinic play on the sound of the words.

Shittim wood is acacia, shittah, the hard, knotty tree that still grows in the wadis of Sinai and the Arabah, and the wood of all the tabernacle furniture (Exodus 25:10). Israel’s last camp before the crossing is named Shittim, the acacias (Numbers 25:1).

Exodus 34:28 ends ambiguously, “he wrote upon the tables”, and readers have argued whether the “he” is Moses or God. Deuteronomy settles it: God wrote, and wrote the same text, “according to the first writing”.

“There they be” speaks from a time when the tablets could still be pointed to. 1 Kings 8:9 reports the same at the dedication of Solomon’s temple: “There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb.”

Beeroth of the children of Jaakan means the wells of the sons of Jaakan, a clan named among the Horites of Seir (1 Chronicles 1:42). Numbers 33:31-32 lists the same two stops in the opposite order, Moseroth before Bene-jaakan. Numbers 20:28 has Aaron’s robes put on Eleazar.

Gudgodah is the Hor-hagidgad of Numbers 33:32. Jotbath, “a land of rivers of waters”, stands out in a list of dry stops; it has been placed at the oasis of Taba near Eilat, though that is an identification, not a certainty. The rivers are wadis that ran.

“At that time” ties the choice of Levi to the golden calf, when the sons of Levi answered Moses’ call, “Who is on the LORD’s side?” (Exodus 32:26-29). Blessing in his name is the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24-26, “The LORD bless thee, and keep thee”.

“As the LORD thy God promised him” points to Numbers 18:20, where God says to Aaron, “I am thy part and thine inheritance”, and gives the Levites the tithe instead of land. Psalm 16:5 makes the same claim in the first person: “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance.”

“Would not destroy thee” is literally was not willing, lo avah. It is the verb of 1:26, where Israel “would not go up”, and of 2:30, where Sihon “would not let us pass”. Israel was unwilling to obey; God was unwilling to destroy.

“Take thy journey” uses massa, the pulling up of tent pegs to break camp. The words return to the book’s opening, where God said at Horeb, “Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: turn you, and take your journey” (1:6-7). The history has come round to where it started.

“And now” turns from history to demand, as “now therefore” did in 4:1. The question is echoed by Micah 6:8: “what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah gives three items; Deuteronomy gives five.

The question begun in 10:12 does not close until here, so keeping the commandments stands last in what God requires, after fear, walking, love and service. The order does its own arguing: obedience is listed as the expression of love, not its entrance fee.

“The heaven of heavens” is a superlative, the highest heaven. Solomon uses the phrase to marvel that God should live in a house at all: “the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee” (1 Kings 8:27). Psalm 24:1 says the same of the earth.

“Only” is raq, yet or nevertheless: the owner of everything attached himself to one family. The verb is chashaq, as in 7:7, now of the fathers. Amos 3:2 turns the same logic toward judgment: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you.”

Moses once called himself a man “of uncircumcised lips” (Exodus 6:12), a mouth that would not work. Here the heart is the organ that will not open. Jeremiah 4:4 repeats the command and Romans 2:29 builds on it; in 30:6 God promises to do the circumcising himself.

“God of gods” and “Lord of lords” are Hebrew superlatives, like holy of holies; Psalm 136:2-3 sings them and Revelation 19:16 adapts them. “Regardeth not persons” is literally does not lift faces, the idiom for favouring a petitioner. “Reward” means a bribe; 16:19 forbids judges the same.

The fatherless, the widow and the stranger form a trio that returns throughout the book (14:29, 16:11, 24:17-21, 26:12, 27:19). Raiment is simlah, the cloak of 8:4, the very garment 24:17 forbids a creditor to take from a widow as a pledge.

The only other place Israel is told to love the stranger is Leviticus 19:34, “thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt”. A stranger, ger, is a resident foreigner without land or kin. Exodus 23:9 adds: “ye know the heart of a stranger”.

Almost word for word 6:13, with one addition: “to him shalt thou cleave”. Joshua’s farewell uses the same verb, “cleave unto the LORD your God, as ye have done unto this day” (Joshua 23:8), the verb that describes Ruth clinging to Naomi (Ruth 1:14).

“He is thy praise” can mean the one you praise, or your renown, the thing you boast of. After 9:4-6 refused Israel any boast in its own righteousness, this gives it one. Jeremiah 17:14 prays, “for thou art my praise”. “Terrible” means awe-inspiring.

Seventy follows Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5. The Greek Old Testament counts seventy-five, adding Joseph’s grandsons, and Stephen follows that number in Acts 7:14. Stars of heaven quotes the promise of Genesis 15:5, now fulfilled in the crowd listening.