Exodus 34

⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. ¹¹ “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹² Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³ You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim ¹⁴ (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶ and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. ¹⁷ “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal. 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 from Egypt. ¹⁹ All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. ²⁰ The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed. ²¹ “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. ²² You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. ²³ Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. ²⁴ For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet 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 anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. ²⁶ The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” ²⁷ And 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 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Last November Peter J. Leithart wrote an interesting article for First Things journal entitled, “The Promise and Limits of Covenant Polity.” In it he argued that the language of “covenant” might elevate American political discourse above the tired and hackneyed verbiage into which it has so shamefully fallen. In defense of using the language of “covenant,” Leithart argued the following:

First, covenant has deep roots in Western political history. American order is laid out in covenantal and quasi-covenantal documents, from Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity to the U.S. Constitution…

Second, covenant polity’s anti-individualism combats the corrosive effects of liberalism…

Third, covenant polity is polity of mutual obligation…Politics isn’t reduced to the defense of rights…

Covenant polity, finally, unites law and love. Biblical covenants are initiated by the God who loves Israel for the sake of their fathers, and the covenant people are knit together by the bonds of love for neighbor and one’s enemies. Love is not privatized romance but a “macro” value that overarches what Benedict calls a “civilization of love.”

But Leithart concluded his article with an interesting observation:

Covenant isn’t anything like a cure-all. It’s been badly abused. At times, it has taken a racial or tribal turn. It underwrites aggressive nationalism when it treats some nation-state, rather than the church, as the “new Israel.”

The biblical references above expose another difficulty. Western politics borrowed its notion of covenant from the Hebrew Bible. Once we start talking about “renewing the national covenant,” we may have to turn to Israel, as many of the Reformers and their children did, as a model polity. How will that fly?

And then, even more foundationally: Is it possible to speak of a covenant polity without acknowledging a covenant Lord who transcends the polity? Who will that Lord be? Fudging that question will put us right back where we started, with a post-liberalism indistinguishable from liberalism. Facing it will expose how thoroughly covenant polity challenges foundational premises of liberalism.[1]

I think he makes an important point there at the end. “Covenant” outside of an eternal, immutable, faithful God upon whose person and character the covenant can find deep and abiding grounding is likely nothing more than mere political talk like all the rest with which we are so unfortunately familiar. Fortunately for Israel, they had both the language of covenant and faith in the God who issued and ensured the covenant. This becomes especially clear in Exodus 34:9-28 and God’s reinstatement of the covenant with Israel.

God’s covenant with Israel called for a rejection of unfaithfulness.

The fact that this covenant is happening in the aftermath of Israel’s shocking disobedience with the golden calf can be seen in the its strong emphasis on the need for a radical commitment to faithfulness and an exclusive focus on the one true God.

⁹ 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.” ¹⁰ And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. ¹¹ “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹² Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ¹³ You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim ¹⁴ (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), ¹⁵ lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, ¹⁶ and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. ¹⁷ “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.

Time and again in these words we see God’s command that the people have no other gods and that they not allow any foothold for pagan religion to come into the life of Israel. These prohibitions, however, are themselves couched in the two-fold assertion of God’s goodness and God’s deliverance. Concerning His goodness, God reveals that He will do “marvels” that the world has never seen before, that he will do a great “work,” and that “it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.” God is calling Moses and Israel to a life of wonder and amazement! It is hard not to think of Luke’s description of the life of the early church in Acts 2:43 when reading these words: “And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.”

And, what, specifically, were the marvels that God was going to do? He was going to “drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” That is, God would bring His children into the land of promise and He would remove their enemies.

For this reason, allowing the paganism of the inhabitants of the land to take root in Israel’s life would be, in essence, to war against God’s own intentions for them. This is why syncretism, or the mixing of the true faith with paganism, is such a disastrous sin. It robs us of the blessings of God and sets us at odds with His purposes. And this is why Israel is told to tear down the pagan shrines, sacred places, and asherim. More than that, they are not to allow their children to marry the pagan children.

Interestingly, God warns Israel against making a competing covenant with the inhabitants of the land. For that is the upshot of allowing paganism into the camp: it serves as a de facto competing covenant that stands in rebellious opposition to the true covenant of God with His people. This warning against making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land should be seen as a warning against both literal covenants and the implicit covenant of syncretism.

On this point, God’s command that the Israelites “cut down their Asherim” in verse 13 is telling. Victor Hamilton explains what an asherah is.

The Hebrew word for “sacred pole” is ʾăšērâ. Hebrew “Asherah” is the equivalent of Ugaritic “Athirat,” consort of the high god El. Sometimes she is called in those texts ʾilt, “goddess,” or qnyt ilm, “the procreatress of the gods,” or ʾum ʾilm, “mother of the gods,” or rbt ʾatrt ym, either “Lady Athirat of the sea” or “the lady who traverses/ treads on the sea.” Most likely in a passage like Exod. 34: 13, “Asherah” is a cult object, a wooden pole symbolizing the Canaanite goddess.[2]

The IVP Bible Background Commentary makes the further observation that Asherim poles appear to have been popular among some Israelites and points to “the inscription from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the northwest part of the Sinai, ‘Yahweh and his Asherah’” as evidence for this.[3] God knows the wayward hearts of His children. For this reason, He commands utter fidelity.

The point remains throughout the ages: we must keep faith with our faithful covenanting God. We must make no competing covenant with darkness!

God’s covenant with Israel calls for faithful engagement in worship.

Yet the covenant God makes with Israel is not primarily one of prohibition. It also calls for Israel’s positive engagement with God in true worship. Notice the emphasis on Israel’s religious observances:

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 from Egypt. ¹⁹ All that open the womb are mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. ²⁰ The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed. ²¹ “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. ²² You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. ²³ Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. ²⁴ For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet 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 anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. ²⁶ The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” ²⁷ And 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 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Israel was to stay true and pure in their worship of God, not allowing it to be sullied by ungodly elements. Furthermore, they were to set apart all of their firstborn, whether of man or animal. For God as an act of devotion and a sign of their giving all that they have to the Lord. Of the consecration of the firstborn spoken of in verses 19-20, Hamilton writes:

The data about the firstborn comes between laws dealing with worship (17 > 18 > 19– 20 < 21– 26). The flow of thought moves from special days (v. 18) to special animals and sons (vv. 19– 20), and back to special days (vv. 21– 26). Three times a year a male Israelite is to appear before the Lord. Every seventh day he is to cease from work. And one time in his lifetime an Israelite male is to redeem his wife’s firstborn son. Thus Yahweh is Lord of one’s calendar and Lord of one’s children, Lord of festivals and Lord of families.[4]

Yes, “Yahweh is Lord of one’s calendar.” He must be if we are to be His children. And, as Hamilton observes, this consecration is situated in specific instructions concerning the sacred times of Israel’s life. Roy Honeycutt has offered a nice summary of the holy days mentioned beginning in verse 21. He summarizes them in this way:

• “The feast of weeks…was synonymous with the feast of unleavened bread, associated with the Passover.”

• “The first fruits of wheat harvest came fifty days after the feast of unleavened bread and was known later as Pentecost.”

• “The feast of ingathering came in the fall, was probably related to the grape harvest, and was later known as the feast of tabernacles…”[5]

Covenant faithfulness therefore entails not only not doing what we should not do but also doing what we should do. Israel was to avoid syncretism. Israel was to engage in true worship.

All covenant faithfulness involves both of these elements: a refusal to do what is evil and a commitment to do what is right. And yet covenant faithfulness cannot be relegated to simple morality. Rather, it is a sacred avoidance and engagement founded on and in response to the unalterable character of our loving and great God.

On this side of the cross, we see this amplified in the faithfulness and righteousness of Jesus Christ. At the heart of the new covenant of which Jesus spoke is the cross, the ultimate sign of the righteousness of God. In Luke 22 we read:

²⁰ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

The love and faithfulness of God revealed definitively in the person and work of Jesus therefore establishes the foundation for the Christian’s avoidance of ungodliness and of the Christian’s positive engagement in covenant faithfulness. We do not seek to be faithful because of some vague sense of morality. We want to be faithful because God has been faithful to us in Jesus Christ.

We are a covenant people.

We too are called to walk in faithfulness and love…and this for the same reason that Israel was: because Israel’s God is the one true God and He has revealed Himself in our great Savior Jesus Christ.

 

[1] https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/11/the-promise-and-limits-of-covenant-polity

[2] Hamilton, Victor P. Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Kindle Locations 18006-18013). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.117.

[4] Hamilton, Kindle Locations 18155-18158.

[5] Roy L. Honeycutt, Jr. “Exodus.” The Broadman Bible Commentary. Vol.1, Revised (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1969), p.444.