Exodus 34:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Hew thee two tables of stone like the first Before, God himself both provided the tables and wrote on them; now, Moses must prepare the tables, and God would only write upon them. This might be intended partly to signify God's displeasure on account of their sin; for though he had pardoned them, the wound was not, healed without a scar; and partly to show, that although the covenant of grace was first made without man's care and counsel, yet it should not be renewed without man's repentance. And as the tables of stone were emblematical of the hardness of their heart, so the hewing of them by Moses, and writing on them by the Lord, might denote that circumcision and renovation of their hearts by the ministry of God's word, and the influence of his Spirit, which were necessary to prepare them for receiving God's mercies and the performance of their duties. We may observe also, that although the first tables were broken, to show that there was no hope for mankind to be saved by their innocence, yet God would have the law to be in force still as a rule of obedience, and therefore, as soon as he was reconciled to them, ordered the tables to be renewed, and wrote his law on them. This plainly intimates, that even under the gospel (of which the intercession of Moses was typical) the moral law continues to oblige believers. For though Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet not from the command of it, but still we are under the law to Christ. When our Saviour, in his sermon on the mount, expounded the moral law, and vindicated it from the corrupt glosses with which the scribes and Pharisees had obliterated and broken it, he did, in effect, renew the tables, and make them like the first, that is, reduce the law to its primitive sense and intention. And by his writing it on our hearts by his Spirit, as he wrote it on the tables by his finger or power, we may be enabled to conform our lives to it.