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Chapter 33
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Exodus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God’s Identity and Power
Redemption and Deliverance
The Covenant
Mediators and the Priesthood
Summary
Analysis
The LORD tells Moses to cut two new tablets of stone, like the ones he broke, and God will write the commandments on them. The next morning, Moses goes up Mount Sinai alone with the stone tablets. The LORD descends in the cloud and proclaims to Moses his name, “the LORD.” While he passes before Moses, he proclaims himself to be “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love […] but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children.” Moses bows before the LORD in worship and begs him to pardon the “stiff-necked” Israelites and accompany them to the promised land.
God renews his covenant with Israel. Like the first time God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, God prefaces this event by announcing his name and character, but this time he goes into more detail about both his “steadfast love” and his wrath against “iniquity.” This description of God’s character is echoed several times throughout the Hebrew Bible. Moses agrees with God about the people’s stubbornness, and on that basis, he asks for God to go with them to the promised land.
Themes
The LORD makes a covenant with the people. He will drive out the foreign nations before Israel. They must tear down those people’s altars, because they must worship no other God, and they must not intermarry with the foreigners. They must not make idols, they must keep the Passover, redeem their firstborn, and keep the sabbath. The LORD commands Moses to write down the words of the covenant. Moses is with the LORD, fasting, for 40 days and 40 nights.
God restates some of the items that accompanied the first giving of the Ten Commandments, especially those having to do with foreigners and religious observances. Given the people’s idolatry with the golden calf, these commands probably bear repeating! The sequence of 40 days and nights corresponds to the period of time Moses spent on Mount Sinai the first time.
Themes
When Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets in hand, his face is shining because he has been talking with God. Aaron and the Israelites are afraid to come near him. But Moses calls to them and tells them what God commands them. Afterward, he puts a veil over his face. Whenever he goes before the LORD, he removes the veil, and whenever he comes to speak God’s words to the Israelites, he covers his face again.
Because of Moses’s encounter with God’s glory on Sinai, the glory is reflected through him to the people, confirming to them that he has been with God and that the Ten Commandments are divinely authorized. As a mediator or representative, Moses intercedes for sinful people in God’s presence, and he mediates God’s glorious presence to sinful people.
Themes
