Question:
Will you please harmonize Exodus 34:28 with Hebrews 8:7 and Ephesians 2:12-15?
Answer:
There is nothing to harmonize. When two statements of Inspiration seem to be in conflict, the difficulty is not in the statements but in our limited understanding. We need to be brought into harmony with the Word. Exodus 34:28 reads: “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.” Each of the first two times that the pronoun “he” occurs in the above, it refers to Moses, who was in the holy mount by the invitation of the Lord. Verses 1, 2. The last “He” refers to the Lord, who wrote the Ten Commandments, as He told Moses He would. See verse 1, where the Lord says, “I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.” See also Deuteronomy 10:1-4, where Moses declares that “He [the Lord] wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments…” Boothroyd translates Exodus 34:28, the last clause: “And Jehovah wrote upon the tables, the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”
The Ten Commandments are not the mutual covenant, the covenant which God made with Israel, as recorded in Exodus 19:5-8 and 24:3-8. Yet they are called the words of the covenant, and the ten words of the covenant, because the covenant was made concerning these words. That is, Israel in that promised to keep the Decalogue. The covenant Israel entered depended on the Decalogue, not the Decalogue on the covenant. The covenant, the agreement Israel made, could be broken a thousand times, but that would not affect God’s law. A foreigner may promise to keep the law of this country on the condition that he be received as a citizen. That law would be the law of his covenant or promise. He might then break his promise or violate his covenant, but that would neither abolish nor confirm nor affect the law of the land. That would stand whether he kept it or not. The covenant mentioned in Hebrews 8:7 was the covenant into which Israel entered. It was faulty because Israel, being sinful and weak, could not keep the law. In the new covenant, old as the days of Abel, God puts the same law in the heart, and then man keeps it.
Ephesians 2:12-15 refers to the covenants and man’s relation to them. Verse 12 shows the condition of the Gentiles who do not know God. Verses 13 and 14 show how they are brought nigh to God through Christ, who is our peace, to reconcile us to God. He does this by abolishing “in His flesh the enmity.” The “enmity” is not on God’s part but ours. “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Romans 8:7. This carnal mind, Christ abolished in His flesh for us all. In other words, Christ took away the sin and all those typical services and symbols which pointed out sin and made remembrance of it but could not take it away. Jesus Christ neither abolished nor changed the moral law, the Ten Commandments. See Isaiah 42:21; Matthew 5:17-20. It was inseparable from His heart and life. Psalms 40:7, 8.
