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Exodus 34

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1 And Jehovah said to Moses, carve·​·out for thee two tablets of stones like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which thou didst break.

2 And be thou prepared for the morning, and come·​·up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and stand·​·up for Me there on the head of the mountain.

3 And a man shall not come·​·up with thee, and also a man shall not be seen in all the mountain; and a flock and a herd shall not pasture next·​·to this mountain.

4 And he carved·​·out two tablets of stones like the former ones, and Moses got·​·up·​·early in the morning, and went·​·up to Mount Sinai, as Jehovah commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stones.

5 And Jehovah came·​·down in a cloud, and stood·​·forth with him there, and He proclaimed with the name of Jehovah.

6 And Jehovah passed·​·by over his faces, and He proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and of much mercy and truth;

7 observing mercy for thousands, bearing iniquity, and transgression, and sin; and in absolving will not absolve; visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons, and on the sons of the sons, on the thirds and on the fourths.

8 And Moses made·​·haste, and bent·​·himself toward the earth, and worshiped.

9 And he said, If, I pray, I have·​·found grace in Thine eyes O Lord, let the Lord, I pray, go in the midst of 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 cut a covenant; before all thy people I will do wonderful things, that have not been created in all the earth, and in all the nations; and all the people in the midst of whom thou art shall see the deed of Jehovah, for it is a fearful thing that I do with thee.

11 Keep for thyself what I command thee today; behold, I drive·​·out from thy faces the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take·​·heed for thyself, lest perhaps thou cut a covenant with those who dwell·​·in the land on which thou comest, lest perhaps it become a snare in thy midst.

13 For you shall tear·​·down their altars, and shall break their statues, and shall cut·​·off his groves.

14 For thou shalt not bow· thyself ·down to another god; for Jehovah the Jealous is His name, a jealous God is He;

15 lest perhaps thou cut a covenant with those who dwell·​·in the land, and they commit·​·harlotry after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 and thou take of his daughters for thy sons, and his daughters commit·​·harlotry after their gods, and make thy sons commit·​·harlotry after their gods.

17 Thou shalt not make for thee molten gods.

18 The festival of unleavened things shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened things, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed of the month Abib; because in the month Abib thou wentest out from Egypt.

19 Everything that opens·​·up the womb is Mine; and of all thy livestock thou shalt give the male, that opens·​·up the womb of an ox and of an animal·​·of·​·the·​·flock.

20 And that which opens·​·up the womb of a donkey thou shalt redeem with an animal·​·of·​·the·​·flock; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt chop· its ·neck. Every firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And My faces shall not be seen empty.

21 Six days thou shalt serve, and on the seventh day thou shall cease; in plowing and in harvest thou shalt cease.

22 And the festival of weeks thou shalt make to thee of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the revolving of the year.

23 Three times in the year shall every male of thine be seen before the faces of the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel.

24 For I dispossess nations from thy faces, and I will enlarge thy border; and no one shall covet thy land, when thou goest up to see the faces of Jehovah thy God three times in the year.

25 Thou shalt not slaughter the blood of My sacrifice upon what is leavened; and the sacrifice of the festival of the Passover shall not pass·​·the·​·night to the morning.

26 The firstfruits of the first things of thy ground thou shalt bring into the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not cook a kid in the milk of its mother.

27 And Jehovah said to Moses, Write for thee these words; because upon the mouth of these words I cut a covenant with thee and with Israel.

28 And he was there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. And He wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten words.

29 And it was, as Moses went down from Mount Sinai, and the two tablets of the Testimony in Moseshand, as he went down from the mountain, that Moses knew not that the skin of his faces shone when he spoke with Him.

30 And Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, and behold the skin of his face shone; and they feared to approach him.

31 And Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the chiefs in the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them.

32 And after this all the sons of Israel approached; and he commanded them all that Jehovah had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.

33 And Moses completed speaking with them, and he put a veiling over his face.

34 And when Moses came·​·in before Jehovah to speak with Him, he removed the veiling until he went out; and he went out, and spoke to the sons of Israel that which was commanded.

35 And the sons of Israel saw the faces of Moses, that the skin of Mosesfaces shone; and Moses turned·​·back the veiling upon his faces until he came in to speak with Him.

   


Thanks to the Kempton Project for the permission to use this New Church translation of the Word.

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.