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Exodus 34

Exodus 34: The LORD, the LORD, a Merciful and Gracious God

Exodus 34: God renews his covenant after the golden calf, gives Moses two new stone tablets, and proclaims his own name - 'merciful and gracious' - as Moses' face shines from God's presence.

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Exodus 34
Exodus 34: The LORD, the LORD, a Merciful and Gracious God
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Exodus 34: The LORD, the LORD, a Merciful and Gracious God

Exodus 34 records the renewal of the covenant Israel broke at the golden calf: God tells Moses to cut two new stone tablets to replace the ones he shattered in anger, and as the LORD passes before him on Mount Sinai he proclaims the fullest self-description of his own character found anywhere in the Old Testament - “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth.” The covenant is renewed on its original terms, and Moses spends forty days and nights on the mountain without food or water. He comes down transformed, his face so radiant from speaking with God that Israel could not bear to look at him without a veil.

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Quick Answer

Exodus 34 is the renewal of the covenant after the golden calf, in which God gives Moses two new stone tablets, proclaims his own name as “merciful and gracious,” and Moses comes down the mountain with a face shining from God’s presence.

About Exodus 34

Exodus 34 resolves the crisis that began two chapters earlier with the golden calf. God had already told Moses in chapter 33 that his presence would go with Israel after all; now he tells Moses to cut two new tablets of stone “like the first” and to come up Mount Sinai alone, with no one else permitted on the mountain and no flocks grazing in front of it. Moses obeys, and there the LORD descends in the cloud and stands with him - fulfilling the request Moses made at the end of the previous chapter, “please show me your glory.”

What follows is the fullest self-revelation of God’s character in the Old Testament. “The LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, ‘The LORD! The LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.’” This declaration, often called the thirteen attributes of mercy in Jewish tradition, holds God’s compassion and his justice together in a single formula. It does not resolve the tension between mercy and judgment; it names both as true of God at once. The formula becomes one of the most-quoted lines in the rest of Scripture - Moses himself quotes it back to God in Numbers 14:18 while interceding for the nation, and it echoes through the Psalms, Joel, Jonah, and Nehemiah.

Moses responds immediately by bowing to the ground in worship, then makes his boldest intercession yet: “if now I have found favour in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go amongst us, even though this is a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” God answers by renewing the covenant itself - marvels not worked in any nation, the driving out of the Canaanite peoples, and a restatement of the core covenant obligations: no covenant with the nations’ gods, no cast idols, the feast of unleavened bread, the redemption of the firstborn, the sabbath rest, the feast of weeks and the feast of harvest, and the prohibition against boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk. Moses is on the mountain forty days and nights, eating no bread and drinking no water, and writes the words of the covenant - the Ten Commandments - on the new tablets.

The chapter closes with an image that reshapes the rest of the Bible’s language about glory: Moses comes down from Sinai “and Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.” Aaron and Israel are afraid to come near him. Moses begins wearing a veil over his face except when he goes in to speak with the LORD, removing it only in God’s presence and putting it back on before addressing the people. Paul takes up this image directly in 2 Corinthians 3, contrasting the fading glory Moses had to veil with the permanent, unveiled glory believers carry through the Spirit - “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory.”

Full Chapter Text

Exodus 34 (World English Bible)

  1. The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel two stone tablets like the first. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
  2. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.
  3. No one shall come up with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain. Do not let the flocks or herds graze in front of that mountain.”
  4. He chiselled two tablets of stone like the first; then Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up to Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two stone tablets.
  5. The LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the LORD’s name.
  6. The LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, “The LORD! The LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth,
  7. keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
  8. Moses hurried and bowed his head towards the earth, and worshipped.
  9. He said, “If now I have found favour in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go amongst us, even though this is a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”
  10. He said, “Behold, I make a covenant: before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been worked in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people amongst whom you are shall see the work of the LORD; for it is an awesome thing that I do with you.
  11. Observe that which I command you today. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
  12. Be careful, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be for a snare amongst you;
  13. but you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and you shall cut down their Asherah poles;
  14. for you shall worship no other god; for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
  15. “Don’t make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, lest they play the prostitute after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call you and you eat of his sacrifice;
  16. and you take of their daughters to your sons, and their daughters play the prostitute after their gods, and make your sons play the prostitute after their gods.
  17. “You shall make no cast idols for yourselves.
  18. “You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib; for in the month Abib you came out of Egypt.
  19. “All that opens the womb is mine; and all your livestock that is male, the firstborn of cow and sheep.
  20. You shall redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb. If you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. No one shall appear before me empty.
  21. “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in ploughing time and in harvest you shall rest.
  22. “You shall observe the feast of weeks with the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of harvest at the year’s end.
  23. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.
  24. For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither shall any man desire your land when you go up to appear before the LORD, your God, three times in the year.
  25. “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. The sacrifice of the feast of the Passover shall not be left to the morning.
  26. “You shall bring the first of the first fruits of your ground to the house of the LORD your God. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
  27. The LORD said to Moses, “Write these words; for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”
  28. He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
  29. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mountain, Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.
  30. When Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come near him.
  31. Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them.
  32. Afterward all the children of Israel came near, and he gave them all the commandments that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.
  33. When Moses was done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.
  34. But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and he came out, and spoke to the children of Israel that which he was commanded.
  35. The children of Israel saw Moses’ face, that the skin of Moses’ face shone; so Moses put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

World English Bible. Public domain.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main message of Exodus 34?

Exodus 34 renews the covenant God’s people broke at the golden calf. Moses receives two new stone tablets and hears God proclaim his own character as merciful, gracious, patient, and just - the fullest self-description God gives of himself in the Old Testament - then comes down the mountain with a face so radiant from God’s presence that he must wear a veil.

Who wrote Exodus 34?

Exodus is traditionally attributed to Moses, who is himself the central figure of this chapter’s mountain encounter. Scholarly dating places the composition in the fifteenth century BC under the early exodus view (tied to 1 Kings 6:1), or the thirteenth century BC under the later view (correlated with Egyptian records under Ramesses II).

When was Exodus written?

The traditional dating places the exodus and the giving of the law at Sinai in the fifteenth century BC, with Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch following soon after. The later scholarly view places the exodus in the thirteenth century BC. Either way, the material in Exodus 34 sits at the foundational covenant-making moment of Israel’s history as a nation.

What does “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God” mean?

It is God’s own proclamation of his name and character in verses 6-7, sometimes called the thirteen attributes of mercy in Jewish tradition. The formula holds God’s compassion - mercy, grace, patience, faithfulness, forgiveness - together with his justice - he “will by no means clear the guilty” - in a single statement, refusing to soften either truth for the sake of the other.

What are the “thirteen attributes of mercy”?

Jewish tradition counts thirteen distinct attributes of God named in Exodus 34:6-7: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness, abundant in truth, keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity, forgiving disobedience, forgiving sin, and not clearing the guilty, with iniquity visited to the third and fourth generation. The formula became a liturgical touchstone in Jewish worship and is quoted or echoed more than two dozen times elsewhere in the Old Testament.

Why did Moses’ face shine after being on the mountain?

Moses’ face shone from spending forty days and nights in direct conversation with God on Mount Sinai. He himself “didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him” - the radiance was an unconscious byproduct of proximity to God’s glory, so bright that Aaron and Israel were afraid to come near him until he called them to himself.

How does Exodus 34 connect to the New Testament?

Paul takes up the image of Moses’ veiled, radiant face directly in 2 Corinthians 3, contrasting the fading glory Moses had to conceal with the permanent, unveiled glory believers now carry through the Spirit: “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory.” The mercy formula of verses 6-7 also anticipates the New Testament’s fuller revelation of grace and truth in John 1:14-17.

What is the significance of Moses’ veil in Exodus 34?

After speaking with the LORD, Moses’ face shone so brightly that he began wearing a veil whenever he addressed the people, removing it only when he went back in to speak with God directly. The veil protected Israel from a glory they could not bear to look at directly, and Paul later reads it as a picture of the old covenant’s fading, indirect nature compared to the direct access believers have in Christ.

How many verses are in Exodus 34?

Exodus 34 contains 35 verses, moving from the remaking of the tablets and God’s proclamation of his name (verses 1-9), through the renewed covenant terms (verses 10-26), to Moses’ forty days on the mountain and his radiant, veiled descent (verses 27-35).

Reading Plans Featuring This Chapter

Sources & Further Reading

  1. The Bible Project - Exodus 19-40 Explainer
  2. Exodus 34 - World English Bible (source text)
  3. Got Questions - What are the thirteen attributes of God’s mercy in Exodus 34?
  4. Bible Gateway - Exodus 34 (BSB)

About Psalm Selah

Psalm Selah is the cinematic indie-folk project of Psalmody Press, a male and female duo bringing Scripture into the sonic world of contemporary indie - fingerpicked acoustic guitar, cello-led strings, brushed drums, mandolin shimmer, and two voices used as a per-song lever (a raw male lead, an ethereal female lead, harmony, duo, or solo). The duo works in the tradition of Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire,” Hozier, Bon Iver, Sleeping at Last, Sandra McCracken, and Andrew Peterson, with Hans Zimmer’s intimate-to-cinematic dynamic range. Their signature compositional move is build choreography - every song-structure transition is locked 1:1 to an instrumentation event, so the song’s shape is its instrumentation order. Their signature lyric move is the structural Selah - a held silence inside the song, sonic and lyrical, where the listener is asked to pause and consider what was just said. They are setting every chapter of the Bible to song, with particular attention to the wisdom literature, the parables of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, the apocalyptic books, and the chapters of Scripture where careful, lyrical attention rewards close listening.

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Published: 2026-07-02 · Last updated: 2026-07-02 Written by: Reid Wender, Editorial Director, Psalmody Press