3,000 Israelites have been killed by Moses’s Levite enforcers and God and Moses sit down again to rewrite their covenant. God keeps saying that He will send an angel ahead to clear out the land and He will make sure that everything goes to plan, but that He’s not going to actually travel with them because they are so disobedient and flawed that He can’t stand to be around them. If God tries to travel with the Israelites all the way back to Caanan He’s going to end up wiping all of them off the face of the Earth.
By now Moses and God are good friends and Moses practically begs Him to come with, so that everyone will know that God is with them and that God is responsible for all the great things happening. He also asks to see God’s glory. God agrees to the first request, and says that He will travel with Moses because He thinks Moses is awesome (33:17), but Moses can’t see His glory because that would destroy him.
Assuming that’s true, it’s kind of an interesting statement on this nitpicky, theoretical idea of omnipotence we like to debate, like if God can make a rock so big that He Himself cannot lift it. God has made a creature so frail that He Himself cannot look it in the eye.
He does tell Moses that He will pass by though and allow Moses to see the place where He just was, but not His face. Moses is so spiritually charged up by that interaction that his face starts glowing and everybody at the camp gets freaked out.
Moses and the Lord have a tent set up out away from camp a little ways where they hang out and write down their covenant. It sounds like this takes place over a pretty long stretch of time. Every day Moses walks ceremoniously out to the tent and God hovers overhead in the form of a dust cloud. He mostly reiterates the same things He told Moses in the last covenant about dedicating all the first born males to Him and keeping the Sabbath. Seriously, God is not joking around when it comes to keeping the Sabbath. Also, keep those festivals and don’t eat goats if they’re boiled in their mothers’ milk.
An interesting addition to this version of the covenant is that the Israelites aren’t allowed to make any treaties with any of the people they conquer in Caanan. If they allow themselves to be allies with any other people, God figures the Israelites are so unfaithful, that they will soak up this foreign culture and their foreign Gods. The way He says it is pretty interesting too. My New Living Translation says “They are spiritual prostitutes, committing adultery against me by sacrificing to their gods. If you make peace with them, they will invite you to go with them to worship their gods, and you are likely to do it.” 34:15 Adultery, that’s very personal.
Moses has taken to wearing a veil around the camp now because his face glows so much. Once the covenant gets worked out, they take up a collection of acacia wood and metals and gemstones and cloth and everything they need for the tabernacle and the priests. I’m a little surprised that Aaron still gets to be high priest after that stunt with the golden calf, but that’s politics I guess.
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