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Exodus 34:28

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So Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Commentaries

Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.

Matthew Henry Bible Commentaryv. 28

Here is, I. The continuance of Moses in the mount, where he was miraculously sustained, Exo 34:28. He was there in very intimate communion with God, without interruption, forty days and forty nights, and did not think it long. When we are weary of an hour or two spent in attendance upon God and adoration of him, we should think how many days and nights Moses spent with him, and of the eternal day we hope to spend in praising him. During all this time Moses did neither eat nor drink. Though he had before been kept so long fasting, yet he did not, this second time, take up so many days' provision along with him, but believed that man lives not by bread alone, and encouraged himself with the experience he had of the truth of it. So long he continued without meat and drink (and probably without sleep too), for, 1. The power of God supported him, that he did not need it. He who made the body can nourish it without ordinary means, which he uses, but is not tied to. The life is more than meat. 2. His communion with God entertained him, so that he did not desire it. He had meat to eat which the world knew not of, for it was his meat and drink to hear the word of God and pray. The abundant satisfaction his soul had in the word of God and the visions of the Almighty made him forget the body and the pleasures of it. When God would treat his favourite Moses, it was not with meat and drink, but with his light, law, and love, with the knowledge of himself and his will; then man did indeed eat angels' food. See what we should value as the truest pleasure. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, neither the abundance nor delicacy of food, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. As Moses, so Elijah and Christ, fasted forty days and forty nights. The more dead we are to…

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Cross-references

Other passages the community most often connects to this one. Tap to read.

Exodus 34:1rank 8

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

Exodus 24:18rank 7

Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

Deuteronomy 4:13rank 7

He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to follow—the Ten Commandments that He wrote on two tablets of stone.

Deuteronomy 9:18rank 7

Then I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. I did not eat bread or drink water because of all the sin you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD and provoking Him to anger.

Deuteronomy 9:25rank 7

So I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.

Exodus 32:16rank 6

The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

Exodus 31:18rank 6

When the LORD had finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.

II Corinthians 3:7rank 4

Now if the ministry of death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its fleeting glory,

Deuteronomy 9:9rank 2

When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.

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