Covenant Remaking (34)

2. Covenant Remaking (34)Having destroyed the first copy of the covenant tablets Moses was instructed to ascend Mount Sinai and receive another copy. However, the conditions of this version of the covenant differ from the more famous ones of Exodus 20. While still containing ten commandments, Exodus 34 consists of laws related to worship practices and is called the Ritual Decalogue. Various schemes have been devised to come up with the exact ten suggested by 34:28. This is one possible enumeration.

1. You may not worship any other god, because YHWH, whose name is Jealous One, is a jealous God. (14a)
2. You may not make molten gods for yourselves. (17)
3. Every firstborn human or animal belongs to God. (19a)
4. No one may appear before God without an offering. (20c)
5. You can work six days, but on the seventh day you may not work. (21a)
6. You must observe the feast of weeks, the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering. (23)
7. You may not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened. (25a)
8. The Passover sacrifice must not remain until the morning. (25b)
9. You must bring the best of the first fruits of the soil to the house of Yahweh your God. (26a)
10. You may not boil a kid in its mother's milk. (26b; also 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21)

Kashrut. The practice of boiling a kid in its mother's milk may derive from Canaanite fertility rituals. The prohibition of eating milk and meat together is part of the elaborate Kashrut system of Jewish laws that regulates food and cleanliness.

    Moses descended Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant. Because he had been talking directly with God his face was aglow with the glory of Yahweh (see Torah Figure 1).

The people of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone; and Moses would put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him (34:35).

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Moses, by Michelangelo (1475-1564) The phrase "skin of Moses' face shown" was misunderstood in the Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible where it rendered shown as "horns," influencing, for example, Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses, which places horns on his forehead. St. Peter's in Vincoli, Rome -- Photo by Barry Bandstra