Exodus 34:28

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.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — Moses remains on Mount Sinai with the LORD after receiving the command to prepare new stone tablets, positioned between the divine instruction to write and his subsequent descent with a radiant face.

The words — The phrase אַרְבָּעִ֥ים יוֹם וְ/אַרְבָּעִ֣ים לַ֔יְלָה ('ar.ba.'Im yOm ve./'ar.ba.'Im Lay.lah) literally renders "forty days and forty nights," marking the precise duration of the uninterrupted encounter.

The thread — This duration mirrors the forty-day stay recorded in Exodus 24:18 and directly precedes the inscription of the Ten Commandments detailed in Deuteronomy 4:13, while Exodus 34:1 establishes the prerequisite preparation of the tablets.

Why it lands — The text requires the reader to note that covenant communication involves extended divine presence and physical suspension, resulting in the direct writing of the Ten Commandments on stone.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

Cross-references

Exodus 34:1 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 24:18 Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
Deuteronomy 4:13 He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to follow—the Ten Commandments that He wrote on two tablets of stone.
Deuteronomy 9:18 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 9:25 So I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, because the LORD had said He would destroy you.
Exodus 31:18 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.
Exodus 32:16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
2 Corinthians 3:7 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 9:9 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.
Deuteronomy 10:2 And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke; and you are to place them in the ark.”