--- title: "Exodus 34 - Study King James Bible with clarkes commentary" description: "Read Exodus 34 with clarkes commentary commentary. 1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tabl" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/clarkes-commentary/exodus/34" --- [ Read](/kjv/exodus/34)[ Commentary](/study/exodus/34)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/exodus/34) Audio 1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon *these* tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. 2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. 3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. 4 ¶ And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. 5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear *the guilty;* visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth *generation*. 8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. 9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it *is* a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. 10 ¶ And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou *art* shall see the work of the LORD: for it *is* a terrible thing that I will do with thee. 11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. 12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: 13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:* 14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name *is* Jealous, *is* a jealous God: 15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and *one* call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; 16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods. 17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 18 ¶ The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt. 19 All that openeth the matrix *is* mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, *whether* ox or sheep, *that is male*.* 20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem *him* not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.* 21 ¶ Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest. 22 ¶ And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.* 23 ¶ Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year. 25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning. 26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. 27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. 28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.* 29 ¶ And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. 30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. 31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them. 32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount Sinai. 33 And *till* Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face. 34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel *that* which he was commanded. 35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him. [Exodus 33](/study/exodus/33) [Exodus 35](/study/exodus/35) ## Commentary To verse 1 Verse [Exodus 34:1](/kjv/exodus/34/1). ***Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first*** — In [Exodus 32:16](/kjv/exodus/32/16) we are told that the two first *tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of* *God*; but here Moses is commanded to provide tables of his own workmanship, and God promises to write on them the words which were on the first. That God wrote the first tables himself, see proved by different passages of Scripture at the end of *Clarke's note at "*[Exodus 32:35](/kjv/exodus/32/35)*"*. But here, in [Exodus 34:27](/kjv/exodus/34/27), it seems as if *Moses* was commanded *to write these words*, and in [Exodus 34:28](/kjv/exodus/34/28) it is said, *And he wrote upon the tables*; but in [Deuteronomy 10:1-4](/kjv/deuteronomy/10/1-4) it is expressly said that God wrote the *second* tables as well as the *first*. In order to reconcile these accounts let us suppose that the *ten* *words*, or ten commandments, were written on both tables by the hand of God himself, and that what Moses wrote, [Exodus 34:27](/kjv/exodus/34/27), was a *copy* of these to be delivered to the people, while the tables themselves were laid up in the ark before the testimony, whither the people could not go to consult them, and therefore a copy was necessary for the use of the congregation; this copy, being taken off under the direction of God, was authenticated equally with the original, and the original itself was laid up as a record to which all succeeding copies might be continually referred, in order to prevent corruption. This supposition removes the apparent contradiction; and thus both God and Moses may be said to have written the covenant and the ten commandments: the former, the original; the latter, the copy. This supposition is rendered still more probable by [Exodus 34:27](/kjv/exodus/34/27) itself: "And the Lord said unto Moses, *Write thou these words* (that is, as I understand it, a *copy* of the words which God had already written;) *for* AFTER THE TENOR ( *al pi*, ACCORDING TO THE MOUTH) *of these words I have made* *a covenant with thee and with Israel*." Here the original writing is represented by an elegant prosopopoesia, or personification, as *speaking* and giving out *from its own mouth* a copy of itself. It may be supposed that this mode of interpretation is contradicted by [Exodus 34:28](/kjv/exodus/34/28): AND HE *wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant*; but that the pronoun HE refers to the Lord, and not to Moses, is sufficiently proved by the *parallel* place, [Deuteronomy 10:1-4](/kjv/deuteronomy/10/1-4): *At that time the Lord said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone* *like unto the first - and I will write on the tables the words that* *were in the first tables - and I hewed two tables of stone as at the* *first - And* HE *wrote on the tables according to the first writing*. This determines the business, and *proves* that God wrote the second as well as the first tables, and that the pronoun in [Exodus 34:28](/kjv/exodus/34/28) refers to the LORD, and not to *Moses*. By this mode of interpretation all contradiction is removed. Houbigant imagines that the difficulty may be removed by supposing that God wrote the ten commandments, and that Moses wrote the other parts of the covenant from [Exodus 34:11-26](/kjv/exodus/34/11-26), and thus it might be said that both God and Moses wrote on the same tables. This is not an improbable case, and is left to the reader's consideration. [Exodus 34:27](/kjv/exodus/34/27). There still remains a controversy whether what are called the *ten commandments* were at all written on the *first tables*, those tables containing, according to some, only the terms of the covenant without the *ten words*, which are supposed to be added here for the first time. "The following is a general view of this subject. In [Exodus 20:0](/kjv/exodus/20/0) the ten commandments are given; and at the same time various *political* and *ecclesiastical statutes*, which are detailed in chapters [Exodus 21:0](/kjv/exodus/21/0), [Exodus 22:0](/kjv/exodus/22/0), and [Exodus 23:0](/kjv/exodus/23/0) To receive these, Moses had *drawn near unto the thick darkness where God was*, [Exodus 20:21](/kjv/exodus/20/21), and having received them he came again with them to the people, according to their request before expressed, [Exodus 20:19](/kjv/exodus/20/19): *Speak thou with us - but let not the Lord speak with us, lest we* *die*, for they had been terrified by the manner in which God had uttered the ten commandments; see [Exodus 20:18](/kjv/exodus/20/18). After this Moses, with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the seventy elders, went up to the mountain; and on his return he announced all these laws unto the people, [Exodus 24:1-3](/kjv/exodus/24/1-3), c., and they promised obedience. Still there is no word of the *tables of stone*. Then he wrote all in a book, [Exodus 24:4](/kjv/exodus/24/4), which was called the book of the covenant, [Exodus 24:7](/kjv/exodus/24/7). After this there was a second going up of Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders, [Exodus 24:9](/kjv/exodus/24/9), when that glorious discovery of God mentioned in [Exodus 24:10-11](/kjv/exodus/24/10-11) took place. After *their* coming down Moses is again commanded to go up and God promises to give him tables of stone, containing a *law* and *precepts*, [Exodus 24:12](/kjv/exodus/24/12). This is the first place these tables of stone are mentioned; and thus it appears that the *ten* *commandments*, and several other precepts, were given to and accepted by the people, and the covenant sacrifice offered, [Exodus 24:5](/kjv/exodus/24/5), before the *tables of stone* were either written or mentioned." It is very likely that the commandments, laws, c., were first published by the Lord in the hearing of the people repeated afterwards by Moses; and the *ten words* or *commandments*, containing the sum and substance of the whole, afterwards written on the first tables of stone, to be kept for a record in the ark. These being broken, as is related [Exodus 32:19](/kjv/exodus/32/19), Moses is commanded to hew out two tables like to the first, and bring them up to the mountain, that God might write upon them what he had written on the former, [Exodus 34:1](/kjv/exodus/34/1). 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