After the incident with the golden calf, after Yahweh relented over the evil that he had said he would do to his people^[1] honoring the covenant they violated, after He spoke his long name to Moses, He revealed a revised covenant.  It was similar to the original covenant that ended with the worship of the golden calf, when the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.^[2]  But it was different, too, in some remarkable ways.  What I have called the preamble to the two covenants is contrasted below.

Before the golden calf Moses went up to God like a victor receiving a crown.  You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, the Lord instructed him to say to the Israelites, and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.  After the golden calf Moses quickly bowed to the ground and worshiped and said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord go among us, for we are a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”  How reminiscent this is of the righteous prayer: God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am!^[3]

Before the golden calf the covenant was expressed conditionally, if you will diligently listen to me and keep my covenant, then you will be my special possession out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, and you will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.  But afterward it is simply a unilateral declaration: I am going to make a covenant before all your people.  I will do wonders such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation.  All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful (yârêʼ) thing that I am doing with you.

The Ten Commandments were part of both covenants.  It was part of the first covenant because Exodus 20 is after the preamble in Exodus 19 and before the inauguration of the covenant in Exodus 24.  Moses came and told the people all the Lord’s words and all the decisions.  All the people answered together, “We are willing to do all the words (dabar, הדברים) that the Lord has said,” and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.^[4]  So Moses took the blood and splashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words (dabar, as above).”^[5]  They were part of the next covenant because, The Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words (dabar, הדברים), for in accordance with these words (dabar, הדברים) I have made a covenant with you and with Israel….”  He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments (dabar, as above).^[6]

I borrowed the subject headings from the NET to list the sections of law that were removed from the revised covenant.

They were still law.  They still offer knowledge of sin.  That sin however did not jeopardize the covenant.  Perhaps the most significant omission for the purposes of this essay was in the section labeled “Moral and Ceremonial Laws,” Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone must be utterly destroyed.^[7]  I think all of this will become clearer with its revision at the end of the section labeled “The Angel of the Presence.”

There is no mention in the revised covenant of an angel who will not pardon [their] transgressions.

The contingent statement—if you diligently obey the angel [who will not pardon your transgressions] and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries—was replaced by a simple imperative—Obey what I am commanding you this day.  The sense of this becomes clearer in the next statement where the typical covenant language, “if you do this I will do that,” was replaced by a unilateral declarative, I am going to drive out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

Knowing what they would do beforehand, the Lord amended—You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices—to read—Be careful not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it become a snare among you.  The provision to destroy their altars, smash their images, and cut down their Asherah poles, though more explicit, was left essentially intact.

Here, You must serve the Lord your God and the list of contingent blessings was revised to read, For you must not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

The revised language of this new covenant is startlingly similar to the Lord’s words to Peter:  I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know me.^[8]  [W]hen they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone invites you, you will eat from his sacrifice; and you then take his daughters for your sons, and when his daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will make your sons prostitute themselves to their gods as well.  And once you see all of this, it is as if He had said, when you see that it happens as I have said, When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers,^[9] or, You must not make yourselves molten gods.

And while I think it is perfectly clear that this language is a revision of Exodus 23:32 and 33, it also seems clear that it is the only language that comes close to replacing the covenant-ending—Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone must be utterly destroyed—which, as I said previously, was left out of the revised covenant.

It is perhaps worth noting that in the revised covenant (below) it is made explicit that firstborn sons are to be redeemed and not sacrificed to the Lord.

I’ll let the rest of these contrasts stand without comment.