The Covenant Is Renewed Under the Name Proclaimed

“Hew” is pesol, from pasal, the root of pesel, the graven image forbidden in 20:4. The one carving the LORD commands at Sinai is of blank stone for his own writing. Deuteronomy 10:1 adds a second order in the same breath: “make thee an ark of wood.”

“In the morning” is said twice. “Present thyself” is nitsavta, take your stand, the verb used when Moses was sent to stand at the Nile’s edge to meet Pharaoh in the morning (7:15).

The Jewish chronology of Seder Olam, followed by Rashi, set this ascent on the first of Elul and the descent forty days later on the tenth of Tishri, which made the day Moses returned with forgiveness the Day of Atonement. The dating is tradition, not text.

The first tablets were handed to Moses already written. This time he carries the stones up himself, blank, the weight of the work on his arms before a letter is on them.

The Hebrew is “and he called in the name of the LORD”, the phrase used of Abraham at Bethel (Genesis 12:8). Whether the subject is the LORD or Moses is ambiguous, though verse 6 makes the LORD the one proclaiming.

“Longsuffering” is erekh appayim, literally long of nostrils, since anger in Hebrew burns in the nose. The formula echoes through the Old Testament (Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13), and Jonah quotes it back to God as his complaint (Jonah 4:2).

Iniquity, transgression and sin, avon, pesha and chatta’ah, are the same three words the high priest confesses over the goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:21). The Talmud (Yoma 86a) notes that “will by no means clear” begins with the verb for clearing, and read it of the penitent.

Bowing the head and worshipping, the pair of verbs here, is how Abraham’s servant answered when Rebekah appeared (Genesis 24:26) and how Israel answered the Passover instructions in 12:27. “Made haste” catches the speed: Moses answers the proclamation at once.

Moses addresses God as Adonai, my Lord, not by the name. “Take us for thine inheritance” asks to be God’s own portion, the language of Deuteronomy 32:9: “the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”

“I make a covenant” is a present participle, I am cutting a covenant, now. The “marvels”, niphla’ot, are what Joshua promises the night before the Jordan crossing: “to morrow the LORD will do wonders among you” (Joshua 3:5). “Terrible” in 1611 meant awe-inspiring.

The list opens with the Amorite, a name often used for the land’s inhabitants in general, as in Genesis 15:16, “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”, and Joshua 24:15, “the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell”.

The snare is placed “in the midst of thee”, inside the camp rather than at its borders. Judges 1:27–33 reads like a ledger of exactly this: town after town where the Canaanites “dwelt among them”.

Gideon carried this out at night, afraid of his own family and town: he threw down his father’s altar of Baal and cut down the grove beside it, using its wood for the fire of his offering (Judges 6:25–28).

In the Hebrew text the last letter of acher, “other”, is written oversized. Scribes enlarged the resh so that no one could misread it as a dalet, which would turn “no other god” into “no one god”.

This is the first use of the verb zanah, to play the harlot, for going after other gods, a metaphor the prophets will make their own. Numbers 25:1–2 describes exactly this: the women of Moab “called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods: and the people did eat”.

Solomon is the standing example: “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” when he was old (1 Kings 11:4). The verse follows the drift from one household to the next generation, sons led by their wives’ worship.

The ten words of chapter 20 forbade the pesel, the carved image. This adds massekhah, the cast image, naming the exact technique of the calf, egel massekhah (32:4). Deuteronomy 27:15 later curses the man who makes either one and sets it up in secret.

“As I commanded thee” points back to 12:15–20 and 13:6–7. In 1773 Goethe argued in an essay that verses 10–26, not chapter 20, were the true contents of the tablets; scholars still call this block the ritual decalogue, though its count of ten is disputed.

“That openeth the matrix” is peter rechem, the first to open the womb. Luke 2:23 quotes the law when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple: “Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.”

“Break his neck” is araphto, from oref, the neck, the same word as “stiffnecked”. An unredeemed donkey is killed at the neck, a grim echo of the charge laid against the people in 32:9 and 33:3.

Ploughing and reaping are when a day off costs most. Nehemiah 13:15 found the rule broken on exactly those grounds, men “treading wine presses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves”.

This is the first time the feast is called shavuot, “weeks”, named for the seven weeks counted from the barley to the wheat. “The year’s end” is tequphat hashanah, the turn or circuit of the year, the season of the autumn equinox.

The title grows here to “the Lord GOD, the God of Israel”. Deuteronomy 16:16 repeats the three appearances and adds where: “in the place which he shall choose”.

“Desire” is chamad, the verb of the tenth commandment, “thou shalt not covet” (20:17). While the men are away at the feasts, the LORD undertakes to restrain the covetousness of the nations around, the very sin Israel itself was forbidden.

The phrase “the sacrifice of the feast of the passover” is unusual: it calls Passover a chag, a pilgrimage feast, the word used for the three festivals of verse 23, where Passover is otherwise named apart from them.

Deuteronomy 26:1–10 gives the words to be said when the basket of firstfruits was set down: “A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt.” The gift carries a recital of the whole history from Jacob to the land.

“After the tenor” is al pi, literally according to the mouth of these words. The covenant is made “with thee and with Israel”, with Moses named first, the one whose intercession has held it together since chapter 32.

Deuteronomy 9:18 says Moses lay before the LORD “as at the first, forty days and forty nights” in intercession, and Rashi counted three periods of forty in all: the first ascent, the prayer after the calf, and this one.

“Shone” is qaran, related to qeren, a horn or a ray. Jerome’s Latin rendered it cornuta, horned, which is why Michelangelo’s Moses in Rome has horns on his head.

“The skin of his face shone” is said in verse 29, again here and once more in verse 35. The repetition turns it into the chapter’s refrain, and the first to be afraid are Aaron and the people who had asked for a god they could see.

The order of hearing is the order of 19:7 and 24:3: leaders first, then everyone. The covenant is renewed through the same channels it was first delivered by, Moses to the rulers of the congregation and then to all.

The people who asked to stand far off from the voice (20:18–21) now come near to Moses and his shining face. What they hear is everything spoken on the mountain, which is what chapters 35–40 put into practice.

The “vail” is masveh, a word found only in these three verses of the Bible. Paul, retelling the moment in 2 Corinthians 3:13, uses the ordinary Greek word for a covering.

The tent he goes into is presumably the tent outside the camp of 33:7, so the verses describe a practice that continued through the wilderness years: unveiled before the LORD, unveiled while delivering his words, and veiled only afterward.

The chapter ends on the face. In the Gospels’ transfiguration, where Moses himself appears on a mountain with Elijah, it is Jesus whose “face did shine as the sun” (Matthew 17:2).