September 9th 2015
The second TEN COMMANDMENTS
The LORD whose name is Jealous
Exodus Chapter 34 begins the second giving of the commandments of God, but this time they are a little different. In the first go we have a solid 10 commandments which are given to Moses, but in addition to the 10 we have many other commandments given as well regarding alters, sacrifice, feasts, witchcraft, servants, property, and worship. Today, In Chapter 34 God revisits with Moses and this time He has a whole new set of rules (or commandments).
One thing immediately pops out in Exodus:
34:14 – For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD whose name is Jealous is a jealous God:
A name for God! Jealous – Hebrew “Kan-naw”… This is right after God’s people had been worshiping a golden calf (and Moses commanded the Levites to kill the non-believers – about 3000 people). A little while later Moses is back on the mountain and speaking with the Lord again and as God is speaking He tells Moses His name is Jealous.
There isn’t a whole lot of differing information about this on the internet that I’ve been able to find. It’s all actually pretty simple, God is Jealous. This kind of jealousy is intolerant of unfaithfulness or rivalry. God does not want us to be spending time with other gods in the same way we would not want our husbands or wives having sex outside of our marriage. But here is where it can get a little confusing. We think of spending time with other Gods as worshiping the devil or something like that, which is evil as well, but worshiping other gods could be anything from football to porn. In the old days there were gods of everything, god of the forest, god of the wind, god of the sun. All the people of the land had gods for everything; this is still true today, we just don’t call them gods anymore…
The other commandments are to keep the feast of unleavened bread as a reminder of the exodus out of Egypt; to give all that openeth the matrix and all first born males of the cattle to God; Keep the sabbath (look familiar?); observe the feast of weeks; three times a year the male children should appear before the Lord; thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven – neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning; give the firstfruit of the land to the House of The Lord; thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk;
In this second go only two of the 10 commandments were repeated. Have no other gods and keep the sabbath.. Hmmm, something comes to mind all of a sudden, what about in the new testament, what does Jesus say about the commandments? What are the most important commandments? Love God? Love your Neighbor? Does that mean to have no other Gods before me? Does that mean to have God “Kan-naw” first? I think it does. It seems this first commandment was first in the first set of 10 commandments, it was also first in the second set of commandments, and also first in the new commandment after Jesus came… I think here Gods name “Kan-naw” is PRETTY IMPORTANT!!!
Another thing to note here is that Moses wrote the second set of commandments (the set that didn’t get broken and ended up in the arc of the covenant); This whole experience with God, 40 days with God and Moses seemed to have caught something – A shining face! His skin was shining when he came off the mountain and it actually scared the people so much that Moses had to put a veil over his face so he could talk to them, but then something else happens. Moses goes back and talks to God again and again after the commandments. It seems that the information we have here is quite limited in that Moses had many other conversations with God which are not documented in the Bible. I wonder what they talked about? Were there more laws? Were they just chatting and having a good time?
Tomorrow we’ll go into Chapter 35 – More commandments about the Sabbath. My prayer today is that we as Children of God will turn from our false gods and seek the true God “Kan-naw”, the Jealous God, and worship Him with a pure heart and mind. That we will turn from evil and repent. We will quite our souls and listen to the voice of God. He will speak to us if we will listen and do as He commands. His mercy endures forever. Praise God!
