Exodus 34 — The LORD Proclaims His Name

Today’s Passage: Exodus 34

Sit down slowly with this chapter, for we have come to one of the highest places in all of Scripture, and I would not have you rush past it. Just before this, in the chapter behind us, Moses had made a bold and holy request. He had asked to see the glory of God. Now hold that longing in your mind, and then watch what God actually does with it, for it is not at all what a man might expect. When Moses asks to see God’s glory, God does not first unveil a blaze of light or a landscape of fire. He passes by, and He speaks. What He shows Moses first is His character, spoken aloud, His own name proclaimed by His own voice: the LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness. This is the glory of God, that He would tell us who He is at the very center of His heart. And He tells it on the far side of the golden calf, to a people who had just broken everything, with two fresh tablets in Moses’ hands to replace the ones that lay shattered at the foot of the mountain. Mercy after the calf. That is the ground on which the name of God is spoken here, and it is holy ground indeed.

As you read, hold this: When Moses longed to see God’s glory, God answered by proclaiming His own name, and the glory He revealed was the glory of His heart, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion, and yet by no means clearing the guilty.

Exodus 34:1-4 (BSB)

¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. ² Be ready in the morning, and come up on Mount Sinai to present yourself before Me on the mountaintop. ³ No one may go up with you; in fact, no one may be seen anywhere on the mountain—not even the flocks or herds may graze in front of the mountain.” ⁴ So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the originals. He rose early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hands, he went up Mount Sinai as the LORD had commanded him.

Begin by letting the sheer grace of the opening command sink in. The covenant had been broken. The first tablets, written by God’s own finger, lay in pieces at the foot of the mountain. And what does God say? Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, and I will write on them the words that were on the first. God will write the very same words again. The calf did not change His law, and it did not finally change His mind toward His people. He begins the covenant afresh, and He tells Moses to bring stone that can hold the writing once more. There is a whole gospel hidden in that simple instruction, that God is a God who writes His words a second time on a people who broke them the first time.

And notice the reverent care with which Moses is to come. He is to be ready in the morning, to present himself alone on the mountaintop, and no one else, not a single person, not even the flocks and herds, may so much as graze in front of the mountain. This is the same holy God whose presence made Sinai quake, and nearness to Him is not a casual thing. So Moses rises early, cuts the stone with his own hands this time, and climbs the mountain again, carrying the empty tablets up to the God who alone can fill them with His word. He goes exactly as the LORD commanded him, and that quiet obedience is the doorway into the greatest thing he would ever see.

Exodus 34:5-7 (BSB)

⁵ And the LORD descended in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed His name, the LORD. ⁶ Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: “The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

Here we stand at the summit of the whole chapter, and I want us to slow down and take off our shoes, for there is nothing higher in all of Scripture than God telling us who He is in His own words. Moses had asked to see God’s glory. And now the LORD descends in the cloud, stands with him, and proclaims His name. Think of what that means. When the God of all glory chooses to reveal the deepest thing about Himself, He does not point to His power, or His splendor, or the heavens He flung into being. He proclaims His character. He tells Moses His heart. This is the glory Moses had asked to see: the LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness. God’s glory, it turns out, is chiefly the glory of His goodness.

Linger over every word, for the church has come back to these two verses more than almost any others when it wanted to know God. Compassionate, the tender word for a father’s or a mother’s yearning over a child. Gracious, giving freely to those who have not earned it. Slow to anger, literally long of nose, not quick to flare, patient and long-suffering with a people who try Him. Abounding, overflowing, running over, in loving devotion and faithfulness, in covenant love that keeps its promises and truth that never fails. And then, maintaining that loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, three words piled up to cover every kind of wrong, the crookedness, the rebellion, and the failure of His people. This is God describing Himself on the far side of the golden calf. Only a God like this would still be speaking to Israel at all.

And yet hear how the proclamation ends, for we must not soften what God did not soften. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In the very same breath in which He names His overflowing mercy, He names His unbending justice. He does not clear the guilty as though sin did not matter, and He speaks soberly of the way iniquity works its damage down through the generations of those who hold to it. Do not pull these two apart. The same voice speaks both, and the glory of God is that both are perfectly true of Him at once. He is more merciful than we dared hope, and He is more holy than we like to think, and He is not less of either. It is only at the cross, in the end, that we will see how both could be fully honored, where the guilty are forgiven precisely because the guilt was borne and not ignored. But already, here on the mountain, God has told us the whole truth of His heart, and asked us to hold all of it, and worship.

Exodus 34:8-9 (BSB)

⁸ Moses immediately bowed down to the ground and worshiped. ⁹ “O Lord,” he said, “if I have indeed found favor in Your sight, my Lord, please go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our iniquity and sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”

See what the proclaimed name of God does to the man who hears it. Moses does not stand there analyzing it. He falls. He bows to the ground at once and worships, for there is no other fitting response to the God who has just named His own heart aloud. This is what a true sight of God always does. It does not puff a man up with knowledge; it lays him low in worship. And out of that worship Moses prays, and notice that he prays the very name he has just heard straight back to God. He has learned that God forgives iniquity and transgression and sin, and so he asks, forgive our iniquity and sin. He takes God’s self-revelation and turns it into a plea. That is exactly how the name of God is meant to be used, not merely admired but leaned upon.

And hear what Moses asks. He does not ask for an easier people. He owns the truth about them, although this is a stiff-necked people, and then in the same sentence he begs God to go with them anyway, to forgive them, and to take them as His own inheritance. It is a bold and beautiful thing to pray, that God would claim as His treasured possession the very people who had just betrayed Him. But Moses can only pray it because of the name he has just heard. A God who abounds in chesed is a God you can ask to keep a stiff-necked people. Moses prays God’s mercy back to God, and asks Him to be, toward Israel, exactly the God He has said that He is.

Exodus 34:10-14 (BSB)

¹⁰ And the LORD said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will perform wonders that have never been done in any nation in all the world. All the people among whom you live will see the LORD’s work, for it is an awesome thing that I am doing with you. ¹¹ Observe what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ¹² Be careful not to make a treaty with the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst. ¹³ Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles. ¹⁴ For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

On the ground of that name, God renews the covenant, and hear how He answers Moses’ plea. Behold, I am making a covenant. Not I will consider it, not perhaps in time, but here and now, freely, God binds Himself again to a people who had broken every clause of the first agreement. And He promises to do among them wonders never done in any nation on earth, to go before them and drive out the peoples of the land, so that the surrounding nations will look on and see the awesome work of the LORD. Grace does not make God’s people idle; it sends them forward under His mighty hand.

But grace also warns, and God warns them here with great tenderness and great seriousness, for He knows the danger that undid them at the calf. Do not make a treaty with the peoples of the land, He says, or their gods will become a snare in your midst. Tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles. Leave no comfortable foothold for the very idolatry that had just brought you to ruin. And then He gives the reason, and it reaches right back to the name He had proclaimed: you must worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. We must understand that word rightly. God’s jealousy is not the petty insecurity of a small heart. It is the fierce, protective love of a husband who will not share his bride, the love that is jealous precisely because it is true. A God who abounds in chesed is exactly a God who will not calmly watch His people give His love away to a lifeless idol.

Exodus 34:15-17 (BSB)

¹⁵ Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices. ¹⁶ And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same. ¹⁷ You shall make no molten gods for yourselves.

God presses the warning further, because He loves them and knows how sin creeps in. It rarely comes through the front door as open rebellion. It comes softly, through the invitation to a neighbor’s feast, through the marriage of a son to a daughter of the land, through a hundred small compromises that seem harmless in the moment. First you make a treaty, then you share their table, then their daughters draw your sons after their gods, and step by step a people that meant no harm finds itself far from the living God. God calls this what it is, spiritual prostitution, the giving away of a love that belonged to Him alone. He is not being harsh here. He is being a faithful watchman, naming the exact path by which His people will be tempted to wander, so that they might guard their hearts before the first step is ever taken.

And then, plainly and pointedly, comes the command that names the very sin they had just committed: you shall make no molten gods for yourselves. A molten calf was a molten god, cast in a mold, poured out of melted gold. God puts His finger on the wound directly. He does not pretend the calf never happened; He addresses it head on, forbidding the precise thing they had done, so that the renewed covenant would begin with clear eyes about the danger nearest to their own hearts. Real mercy does not ignore the sin. It forgives it, and then it takes it seriously enough to guard against it.

Exodus 34:18-21 (BSB)

¹⁸ You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, you are to eat unleavened bread as I commanded you. For in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt. ¹⁹ The first offspring of every womb belongs to Me, including all the firstborn males among your livestock, whether cattle or sheep. ²⁰ You must redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb; but if you do not redeem it, you are to break its neck. You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons. No one shall appear before Me empty-handed. ²¹ Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in the seasons of plowing and harvesting, you must rest.

Having turned them away from the false gods, God now calls them back to the true worship, and He does it by pointing them to the feasts, the appointed rhythms of remembering. He begins with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, tied forever to the month of Abib, because in that month they came out of Egypt. Do you see the wisdom in it? The surest guard against forgetting God and running to idols is to keep coming back, again and again, to the story of how He redeemed you. A people who yearly taste the bread of their deliverance are not so easily seduced by the gods of the land.

And He reminds them that the firstborn belong to Him, every firstborn of the womb, both of their livestock and of their sons, to be redeemed with a price, and that no one should appear before Him empty-handed. Every firstborn son bought back with a lamb was a living memory of the night in Egypt when the firstborn of Israel were spared under the blood. Then He seals it with the Sabbath: six days you shall labor, but on the seventh you shall rest, and He adds a searching word, even in plowing time and in harvest, when the work is most pressing and the temptation to skip the rest is strongest, you must rest. God will not have His people so consumed by their labor that they forget the Lord of the labor. The rhythm of rest is itself an act of trust, a weekly confession that the harvest is finally in His hands and not in ours.

Exodus 34:22-26 (BSB)

²² And you are to celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. ²³ Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. ²⁴ For I will drive out the nations before you and enlarge your borders, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the LORD your God. ²⁵ Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to Me along with anything leavened, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning. ²⁶ Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

God fills out the year with worship. To the Feast of Unleavened Bread He adds the Feast of Weeks, kept with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year, when the last of the crops are gathered in. Three times a year every man of Israel is to come and appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. Their whole calendar was to be shaped around returning to Him, so that the passing seasons themselves became a summons to worship. And notice the tender promise tucked inside the command. God knows a man might fear to leave his fields and borders undefended three times a year, so He pledges to guard the land Himself: no one will covet your land when you go up to appear before Me. He asks them to trust Him with what they leave behind, and He promises to keep it. Obedience to God’s call to worship never leaves a man the poorer.

Then a few careful instructions about how the offerings are to be made, and each one is teaching a lesson. No leaven with the blood of the sacrifice, for leaven had become a picture of corruption, and nothing corrupt should mingle with the holy blood. Nothing of the Passover left until morning, for it was to be received fresh and whole. The best of the firstfruits brought to the house of the LORD, not the leftovers but the finest, for God is worthy of the first and the best of what His people have. Every detail is training their hearts to give Him the honor due His name. And so God, having named His mercy, now patterns their whole life around remembering it.

Exodus 34:27-28 (BSB)

²⁷ The LORD also said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” ²⁸ So Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Now the covenant is set down in writing, so that it might endure. Write down these words, God says, for on the basis of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. What God has spoken is not to fade like a passing conversation. It is to be written, kept, and read again by generations who were not on the mountain, so that the covenant might stand firm long after that day was over. God’s words are meant to be held onto.

And look at Moses there on the mountain, forty days and forty nights, without bread or water. A man cannot live like that by his own strength; he was sustained by the presence of God, kept alive by nearness to the One he was with. Forty days in the glory of God, fasting, while the words of the covenant were written on the fresh tablets, the very Ten Commandments that had been broken and were now given again. Everything about this scene is a picture of mercy renewing what sin had shattered. The same words, on new stone, written again for a people who did not deserve a second copy. And the man who carried them down had been so long in the presence of God that, as we are about to see, the glory had begun to show on his very face.

Exodus 34:29-30 (BSB)

²⁹ And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD. ³⁰ Aaron and all the Israelites looked at Moses, and behold, his face was radiant. And they were afraid to approach him.

Here is one of the quietest and most beautiful things in the whole book. Moses comes down the mountain with the two tablets in his hands, and his face is shining (קָרַן) qaran, pronounced kaw-RAN. Strong's H7160, to shine, send out rays or beams of light. It is a vivid and unusual word to use of a human face. Its root is bound up with the word for a horn, and it carries the picture of sending out rays, of light shooting forth like beams or horns of brightness. So when the text says Moses’ face qaran, it means his face was sending out rays of light, shining with beams of glory caught from the presence of God. It is a borrowed radiance, a reflected splendor, for Moses had no light of his own. He had simply been with the LORD, and the glory had settled on him and shone out from him without his even knowing. , and he does not even know it. He had been so long in the presence of God, speaking with Him face to face, that the glory of God had left its mark upon him, the way a face that has been turned toward a great light comes away carrying that light. And he was unaware of it. There is a deep lesson in that unawareness. The people most changed by being with God are often the last to see it in themselves. Moses was not shining because he tried to shine. He was shining because he had been with the LORD, and the nearness had done its work quietly, from the inside out.

The apostle Paul takes up this very shining, and this very veil, in his second letter to the Corinthians, and he shows us something greater still. Moses veiled his face because that reflected glory was a fading one, given under the old covenant. But now, Paul says, we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, and we are being changed into His image from one degree of glory to the next. What shone on the face of Moses for a time, and had to be hidden, has become in Christ an unfading and increasing glory that transforms all who behold Him. Moses caught the light and had to cover it. We are invited to gaze on the face of Christ and be remade by it. The rays that once frightened a camp have become, in the gospel, a glory we are welcomed into.

And notice the effect on the people. Aaron and all the Israelites look at him, and they are afraid to come near, for the glory on his face was more than they could easily bear. It was only a reflected glory, a borrowed brightness caught from the God he had been speaking with, and even that was enough to make a whole camp step back in awe. If the reflection was so weighty, what must the source be? This is what happens to a people and a person who draw near to the living God. They begin, without contriving it, to carry something of His glory, and the world around them cannot help but notice.

Exodus 34:31-33 (BSB)

³¹ But Moses called out to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke to them. ³² And after this all the Israelites came near, and Moses commanded them to do everything that the LORD had told him on Mount Sinai. ³³ When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.

Though the people drew back in fear, Moses does not leave them at a distance. He calls out to them, and Aaron and the leaders come, and then all the Israelites gather near, and he tells them everything the LORD had commanded him on the mountain. See the mediator’s heart in this. He has been in the glory, and now he comes down to share what he has received, patiently teaching the people the words of their God. The glory he carried was never meant to keep the people away; it was meant to serve them. He brings the presence of God down into the camp in the form of God’s own words, faithfully delivered.

And when he has finished speaking, he puts a veil over his face. It is a gentle and thoughtful thing to do. The shining that would have frightened them, he covers, so that he might dwell among them and speak with them without that reflected glory standing always between. There is a tenderness in it, a mediator willing to veil the very glory he had been given so as not to overwhelm the people he was sent to serve. And there is a truth in it too, one that Paul would later draw out, that the glory of the old covenant was a veiled and fading glory, hidden away, while the glory that has come in Christ is an open and increasing one, unveiled at last.

Exodus 34:34-35 (BSB)

³⁴ But whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with Him, he would remove the veil until he came out. And when he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded, ³⁵ and the Israelites would see that the face of Moses was radiant. So Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.

The chapter closes with a rhythm that became the pattern of Moses’ life, and it is a rhythm worth taking to heart. Whenever he went in before the LORD, he removed the veil. In the presence of God there was no need to hide; he came uncovered, face to face, and there his radiance was renewed. Then he came out to the people and told them what God had commanded, and they saw his face shining, and afterward he veiled it again until the next time he went in. In and out he went, from the presence of God to the service of the people and back again, and each time in the presence his glory was replenished. The shining was not a memory kept alive by effort. It was a light continually refreshed by returning to its source.

That is the note on which our chapter ends, and it is the note to carry away. Moses shone because he kept going back into the presence of God, and the glory faded only when he stayed away too long. So it is for every soul that would carry any of the light of God into the world. We have no radiance of our own. Whatever glory shows in us is a borrowed and reflected thing, caught only by drawing near, and renewed only by drawing near again. The God who proclaimed His name on the mountain, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion, is the same God we are invited to behold, and no longer with a veil between. Keep going in. That is where the glory is.