Exodus 32

Exodus 32:1

Exo. 32, 33, 34. There are many things in the circumstances of this second giving of the law that we have an account of in these chapters, that are arguments that these two transactions did represent the two great transactions of God with mankind in the covenant of works and covenant of grace. It was in this last covenanting of God with the people, especially, that Moses appeared as a mediator, to which the apostle has respect, Galatians 3:19. It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator, when the people had broken the covenant given at first with thunder and lightning; the law then was made use of as a school-master to convince them of sin. God threatened to leave them, and not go up with them, and when the people were overwhelmed by it, and mourned when they heard the evil tidings, God then further awakened them and terrified them, sending such a message as this to them, “Ye are a stiff-necked people; I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee; therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.” Thus this awful threatening was given forth with some hope and encouragement that peradventure they might live, given in that last clause, that I may know what to do unto thee. By thus applying the terrors of the law, God brought the people to put off their ornaments, which were typical of their own righteousness. Exodus 33:5; Exodus 33:6. Moses now acted as a mediator, and not merely as an intermessenger, as he did in the first giving of the law. He offers his life for theirs; he offers up himself to be accursed and blotted out of God’s book for them, after he had told the people that they had sinned a great sin, and peradventure he should make atonement for their sin, which is to do the part of a mediator. See Exodus 32:30-32. On this occasion, the Lord speaks to Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend, when he came to speak to God in behalf of the people; well representing the intercourse of our Mediator with the Father, Exodus 33:11. And on this occasion God made all his goodness pass before Moses, and proclaimed himself “the Lord, the Lord God, gracious and merciful, forgiving iniquity,” etc. Exodus 33:19; Exodus 39:5-7. The covenant the first time was written on tables that were the workmanship of God, as the soul and heart of man in innocency was; which workmanship of God was destroyed by man’s apostasy; so, upon the children of Israel’s apostasy, Moses brake the tables that were the workmanship of God. The covenant now was written in tables that were the workmanship of Moses, the mediator, as the law of God after the fall is written in the fleshly tables of the heart renewed by Christ. God promises, that in fulfillment of the covenant he now the last time enters into with his people, he will do wonders, such as have not been done in all the earth, and that all the people should see the work of the lord. So God in the way of the new covenant that he entered into with Christ, did those great things by Christ in the work of redemption which are so often spoken of in Scripture as being so exceeding wonderful. God made this covenant with Moses, the typical Mediator, as the head and representative of the people, and with the people in him or under him as his people, that he showed mercy to for his sake. Exodus 34:27. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Write these words, for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel;” and verse 10. “Behold, I make a covenant before all thy people; I will do marvellously.” Before Moses came down from the mount in wrath with the tables broken; so Christ comes as God’s Messenger to execute wrath for the breaking of the covenant of works. Now he comes down with the tables of the testimony in his hand, with his face shining. This being typical of the light of grace with which Christ’s face shines in God’s Israel. See Note on Exodus 32:19; Exodus 33:1.

Exodus 32:19

Exo. 32:19. “And brake them.” Moses’s breaking the tables seems to signify the following things: - (1.) That sin breaks the Law, and particularly that it breaks it as a covenant of works. The tables were the tables of the Covenant. The ten commandments contained a new revelation of the covenant of works, of which two ways of fulfillment were proposed. One was by mere man, the other was by Christ. These tables of the Law were the workmanship of God, without any hewing of Moses’s, as the tables of the heart of man in innocency, wherein the Law was written, were already prepared by God, and needed not any work of the Law or hewing of legal conviction to prepare it. (2.) Another thing signified by Moses’s breaking the table was God’s breaking His covenant between Him and the people, and so were threatened to be cast off from being His covenant people, (for there were the tables of the Covenant between God and the people), agreeable to Gods’ threatening (verses Exodus 32:9; Exodus 32:10; see chap. Exodus 34:1). Ibid. God, as it were, brake the tables in pieces, as disannulling all hopes of men’s ever obtaining life in that way. Now this second time the tables are made by the ministration and instrumentality of Moses, who herein is a type of the gospel ministry. God commanded that the second tables should be committed to the ark to preserve them, that they might not be broken as the first were (compare Deuteronomy 9:16; Deuteronomy 9:17, with 10:1, 2). Thus the affair of the preservation of the hearts of God’s people in holiness is committed to the keeping of Christ. The delivering of the tables of stone this second time is spoken of as the making of a New Covenant (Exodus 34:10).

When Moses came down from the Mount with these new tables it was with his face shining, and not with wrath in his face as before. It was this Covenant that was renewed in Deuteronomy. This was a lively type of what we read of in Jeremiah 31:31; Jeremiah 31:32 (see place, and Hebrews 8:9). What is said in these places would lead one to think that Moses’s breaking these tables signified the breaking or God’s setting aside, not only the Covenant of works, but that old federal Dispensation by which God was as a husband to that people Israel, because of its proving insufficient through their sins to make way for a better Covenant; a federal Dispensation to be introduced by Christ, and in Him to be fulfilled and confirmed, and made an everlasting Covenant, as the second tables made instead of these were secured and kept safe in the ark.