Essay do Wyjścia 34:36

Continuing the dialogue with God from 32:34f., Moshe now pleads that what is necessary is nothing less than the personal assurance that God will lead the people. Six times the verb “know” echoes, along with repetitions of “pray” and “favor”—and so the issue at hand is intimacy and the bonded relationship of covenant. Significantly, also, Moshe refers to Israel three times as “your people,” trying to force God to acknowledge them as his own once more. Answering Moshe’s request for intimacy, God agrees to let him get close, but with limits, and we are reminded of Sinai once more (see the boundary-setting in 19:12–13, 21ff.). The earlier revelation scene is about to be replayed, in altered form—most notably, without the people themselves present.

As if to underscore the point just made, and like the Tent section in Chap. 33, the Calf account ends with a focus on Moshe’s leadership. Gone is any reference to the molten image; the central concern is the effect of God’s communication upon Moshe. Indeed, “speak” occurs seven times here, and the formula “the skin of Moshe’s face was radiating” three times. Putting this section at the end of the narrative leaves the reader with the sense that Moshe’s prayer for God’s closeness in Chap. 33 has at last been answered, and that his very body now bears the sign of divine favor (note the use of the rich symbol of light). Communication between God and Moshe, with Israel witnessing and therefore involved again (in contrast to its removal from this activity at the beginning of Chap. 32), may now proceed again without interruption, and it will now be possible and appropriate to resume construction of the structure whose purpose it is to embody God’s presence in the world of human beings.