NOTES for Exo 34:14

After the story of the golden calf, God concludes a new union-covenant with Moses, as if renewing the one concluded at Sinai with the whole people. Now it is again a covenant with Moses, and here a certain rollback is evident. Indeed, the meaning of the Sinai covenant consisted in large measure precisely in this: that each person would establish his own relationship with God and would answer for it himself.

If this had become possible, if the people had decided to live this way, their whole history, beginning at Sinai, would have been different. In reality everything went as it went: the people proved unready for a new quality of relationship with God, did not dare to take responsibility on themselves, again expecting wonders from leaders, and now the renewal of the union-covenant concerns only one leader, one Moses.

On the other hand, it was Moses who begged God to continue carrying out His previous plan, not to abandon the people, not to create a new one in place of the old, and now that same Moses had to take responsibility for leadership in the new-old situation, in a situation where he would have to answer for the people alone, as in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No spiritual maturity was to be expected from the people, at least from the generation that came out of Egypt: no one sought it or wanted it. It is no accident that, at the renewal of the union, at the confirmation of the covenant, so much attention is given to things that we today perceive as ritual.

There is the Sabbath, and certain matters connected with the redemption of the firstborn, about which something had already been said in Egypt, and the need to cleanse without fail the land God had appointed for His people from pagan altars. In fact, not only the ritual aspect is present here, but God certainly draws Moses' special attention to this external, ritual side. And this is understandable: the people have already shown that the external side, the religious shell of spiritual life, everything connected with worship, rite, and ritual, is absolutely necessary for them.

After the story with the calf it became clear that everything listed is not simply extremely important for the people. Without it spiritual breakdowns are inevitable, and to avoid them a special emphasis will have to be placed on observing ritual prescriptions and in general on the external side of spiritual life, on its religious shell. If so, the essential things must be singled out: refusal to participate in pagan worship, strict observance of the Sabbath, obligatory dedication of the firstborn to God. Not the best beginning for a spiritual path, but what can be done if for now the people are capable of no more.

Closeness to God transforms everything. Moses spent forty days and nights in communion with God, and during all that time he neither ate nor drank. And he did not grow weak, but on the contrary was filled with some new strength, so much so that his face began to shine with rays because God had spoken with him. Listening to God, he was filled with life (see Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4). Carrying out His will, writing the commandments on the tablets, he received food and drink (see John 4:34). Contemplating the glory of God, he was being transformed into the same image (see 2 Cor. 3:18). "If the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came in such glory that the children of Israel could not look at Moses' face because of the glory of his face, a fading glory, will not the ministry of the Spirit be far more glorious?" (2 Cor. 3:7).