Exodus 34

1 And the Lord said to Moses, “Cut yourself two stone tablets like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered. 2 Be ready by morning; and you are to go up Mount Sinai and stand there for me on the top of the mountain. 3 And no one is to come up with you, or be seen anywhere on the mountain; and the sheep and the oxen are not to graze near that mountain.” 4 So he cut two stone tablets like the first ones; and Moses rose early and went up Mount Sinai, as the Lord had ordered him. And Moses took the two stone tablets.

5 And the Lord came down in a cloud and stood beside him there, and he called out the name of the Lord. 6 And the Lord passed by in front of his face, and proclaimed: “The Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, full of mercy, and true, [e] 7 keeping righteousness and showing mercy to thousands, taking away lawless deeds and wrongs and sins — yet he will not hold the guilty clean, bringing the lawless deeds of fathers onto children and onto children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.” [a] 8 And Moses hurried, and bowed low to the earth, and worshiped, 9 and said, “If I have found favor before you, let my Lord go with us — for the people is stiff-necked — and take away our sins and our lawless deeds, and we will be yours.”

10 And the Lord said to Moses, “Look — I am setting a covenant for you. In front of all your people I will do glorious things that have not been done in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people you live among will see the works of the Lord — that the things I will do for you are marvelous. 11 Give heed to everything I command you. Look — I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite. 12 Watch yourself: never make a covenant with those who sit in the land you are entering, or it will be a stumbling block among you. 13 You are to tear down their altars and shatter their standing stones and cut down their sacred groves, and the carved images of their gods you are to burn with fire. [b] 14 For you are not to bow down to another god — for the Lord God, a jealous name, is a jealous God — 15 or you may make a covenant with those who sit in the land among the foreign tribes, and they will go whoring after their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and they will invite you, and you will eat of their sacrifices; 16 and you will take their daughters for your sons and give your daughters to their sons, and your daughters will go whoring after their gods, and they will lead your sons whoring after their gods too. 17 And you are not to make yourself cast-metal gods. 18 And you are to keep the feast of bread without yeast: seven days you are to eat bread without yeast, as I commanded you, at the set time in the month of the new grain — for in the month of the new grain you came out of Egypt. 19 Everything that opens the womb is mine — the males: every firstborn of the oxen and every firstborn of the sheep. 20 And the firstborn of a donkey you are to ransom with a sheep; and if you do not ransom it, you are to pay its price. Every firstborn of your sons you are to ransom. And you are not to appear before me empty-handed. 21 Six days you are to work, but on the seventh day you are to rest; in plowing time and in harvest, you are to rest. 22 And you are to keep for me the feast of weeks, at the beginning of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering in the middle of the year. 23 Three times in the year every male among you is to appear before the Lord, the God of Israel. 24 For when I have driven out the nations from before you and widened your borders, no one will desire your land while you go up to appear before the Lord your God, three times in the year. 25 You are not to slaughter the blood of my sacrifices with anything leavened, and the sacrifices of the feast of the Passover are not to lie until morning. [g] 26 The first produce of your land you are to bring into the house of the Lord your God. You are not to offer a lamb in its mother’s milk.” [f] 27 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words down for yourself; for on these words I have set a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 And Moses was there before the Lord forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water. And he wrote on the tablets of the covenant these words — the ten words. [c]

29 And as Moses came down from the mountain, the two tablets were in Moses’ hands; and as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the look of the skin of his face had been filled with glory while God spoke with him. [d] 30 And Aaron and all the elders of Israel saw Moses — and the look of the skin of his face was glorified — and they were afraid to come near him. 31 And Moses called them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the gathering turned back to him, and Moses spoke to them. 32 And after that, all the children of Israel came near to him, and he commanded them everything the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. 33 And when he had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 And whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off until he came out; and he would come out and tell all the children of Israel what the Lord had commanded him. 35 And the children of Israel would see Moses’ face — that it was filled with glory — and Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in again to speak with him.