Exodus 34:1-4

"And Jehovah said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words which were on the first tables, which thou brakest. And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee; neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before the mount. And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone."

God's renewal of the covenant with Israel was, certainly, upon exactly the same basis as that of the first giving of it. God said, "I will write upon the tables the same words which were on the first tables, which thou brakest." This frustrates and denies all of the scholarly "oompah" about two decalogues - (1) an ethical decalogue, and (2) a ritual decalogue. Fields called such interpretations of this chapter, "Nonsense!"[1] The first person in human history to propose such a ridiculous understanding of this chapter was the great German poet, Goethe, in 1773, but Goethe himself "in his later and riper years spoke of his alleged `discovery' of `another decalogue' here as `a freakish notion due to insufficient knowledge'."[2] It is distressing that critics still quote Goethe who invented such a lie, ignoring his denial of it. Thus, it ever is with Satan. Satan invented the lie concerning the disciples of Jesus stealing his body; and despite the truth that such a falsehood is impossible to believe, Satan still repeats it! Thus, Clements says of these "decalogues," that they "indicate the existence of two different tradions regarding the Ten Commandments."[3] Honeycutt, Noth, and Rylaarsdam all follow the same line, and if one reads a hundred critical scholars, he will encounter the same unproved, in fact disproved, allegations. In the first place, there is no second decalogue in this chapter. Napier even listed it, but how did he find it? He took a few references to the real Decalogue, mentioned especially here because of their relation to Israel's very recent apostasy, split them up, and by elevating a few very minor and incidental clauses into the status of full commandments, presented a list of "ten."[4] Very definitely, there are not two decalogues in Exodus. Regarding what God wrote on the second set of tables, Rawlinson's comment is accurate:

"It is true that we have not yet been specifically told what these words were, but it has been left to our natural intelligence to understand that they must have been the "ten words" uttered in the ears of the people amid the thunders of Sinai, as recorded in Exodus 22:1-19, which are the evident basis of all subsequent legislation. But in Exodus 34:28, and still more plainly in Deuteronomy 10:4, and verse 22, we have the desired statement. The fiction of a double decalogue, invented by Goethe, is absolutely without foundation in fact."[5]

"The first tables, which thou brakest ..." Dummelow believed that God's mention of Moses' breaking the tablets without, any accompanying word of rebuke for it indicated God's acceptance of Moses' action as an example of one who "became angry, and sinned not."[6] This may be true, and yet God's requirement that Moses himself should replace the tables which he had destroyed must be allowed to indicate some measure of disapproval, at least.

"No man shall come up with thee ..." Aaron, specifically, was left out by this arrangement, since his making the molten calf must certainly have disqualified him for any truly spiritual service for an extended period of time.