The LORD said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 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. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”
Comment: God sends Moses down the mountain after Moses has the experience of seeing the ‘back’ of God – whatever that means, but it was obviously something of great importance. He is to hew, or get a stonemason to hew, two new stone tablets and God says that He will again write on them. He actually says ‘I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.’
Moses again climbs the mountain with the two prepared hewn stone tablets. It says that the LORD (in capital letters – which means the ‘Great I AM’) again descends and gives a statement of His own essential nature! “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Was this a Theophany? Jesus will in the future descend again in the clouds, when He returns. Somehow God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve; God appeared to Abraham and he appeared several other times in the Old Testament. And yet God ‘the Great I AM’ had said yesterday that no-one was allowed to see His face! Moses makes one more very major request! “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” How will God answer this request? We will have to wait until tomorrow!
Proverb 21: 24 “Scoffer” is the name of the arrogant, haughty man who acts with arrogant pride.
Prayer: Teach me the greatness of the honour which You give to me by allowing me to come directly to You in prayer!
As I read it! 