by Douglas Goodin
In another article, God’s Proposal to Israel, we saw that God’s promises of blessing to the nation of Israel was contingent upon their obeying His commandments. So, we have to ask the question—Did Israel obey God and keep His covenant?
Several condemning statements by the Lord could be quoted to show that Israel disobeyed God and broke the covenant. We will list two and consider a third.
The Broken Covenant
And the LORD said to me, "Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, 'Hear the words of this covenant and do them. For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning persistently, saying, "Listen to My voice." Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked, each one, in the stubbornness of his evil heart; therefore I brought on them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not." (Jeremiah 11:6-8, emphasis added)
"Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 31:31-32, emphasis added)
In the last verse of Exodus 31, God gave Moses "the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God." These were, of course, the Ten Commandments. They are called "the two tablets of testimony" for a very important reason.
The Hebrew word for 'testimony' (eduth) comes from a family of terms which are often associated with the courtroom and refer to the concept of witness, either the one serving as the witness or what he says. But there is a more nuanced and frequent usage which connotes "serving as a reminder" or "delivering a warning." Most often in the Old Testament, these testimonial warnings are God witnessing to Israel that if she does not repent of her sins, she will be punished. Therefore, when Moses refers to the Ten Commandments as "tablets of testimony," we should understand them to be documents of foreboding to Israel. They are like giant warning labels stating, “DANGER: Failure to keep God’s covenant will kill you.”
Elsewhere, the two tablets are specifically identified as the covenant between God and Israel (Deut. 4:13). Let us grasp the importance of this identification. The Ten Commandments are not God's eternal moral law for mankind, they are God’s conditional covenant with Israel. So when Moses received the stone tablets, he held in his hands the covenant documents for Israel, the signed contract between God and the Jews which required their absolute obedience to the covenant terms (remember the if of the covenant).
I bring these two things to your attention as background for the event that took place in Exodus 32. It seems that while Moses was on the mountaintop receiving instruction from the Lord, the people of Israel grew impatient and decided to occupy themselves with revelry. But before the party began, they persuaded Moses' brother, Aaron, to manufacture an idol to worship during the festivities. They gave him their gold earrings and he gave them a god.
When the Lord observed this, he told Moses, and suggested that the prophet move aside to clear the path for His retributive inferno about to be unleashed upon the wicked Jews. He said,
"They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'" And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people. Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation." (Exodus 32:8-10)
Do you see what has happened? God established His covenant with Israel promising prosperity if they keep it and punishment if they break it. Before the ink on the contract was dry, they violated its terms. The first commandment was a prohibition against worshiping other gods, the second was a prohibition against making graven images; with one idolatrous motion they shattered them both like a baseball through a glass window.
Moses knew what this meant for Israel because he understood the warning of the tablets of testimony. So he quickly begged the Lord for mercy on behalf of Israel (Exo. 32:11-14). If you read these verses, you will notice that Moses did not appeal for mercy from the terms of the covenant. There was no "leniency clause" in this contract. The consequences were clear—failure to obey brought judgment. Israel had disobeyed, and God was ready to judge. But Moses entreated God to spare them, not because of His promises in this covenant, but because of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to protect His own reputation in the eyes of the Egyptians. Therefore, if God spared Israel, it would only be due to His amazing grace, because the stipulations of the covenant required Israel's destruction.
When Moses approached the frolicking Jews, “he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain" (Exo. 32:19). Now, our first thought may be that the humble prophet was betraying a rather hot temper by smashing the tablets of stone into tiny bits in a fit of rage. But there is a much more reasonable and appropriate explanation. Moses did not break the tablets out of anger, he broke them to send an unmistakable message to the Jews. They were in very clear and present danger of being destroyed. By breaking the covenant documents, Moses demonstrated to Israel that they had broken the covenant itself and consequently stood under the curses of the covenant. Just like the stone tablets, Israel would soon be demolished by the holy ire of the holy God whose covenant they had broken.
The answer to the question, Did Israel obey God and keep His covenant? is a resounding, "No! Not even for five minutes."
The End of the Old Covenant
This raises a second question—Did God follow through with His promises to destroy Israel for breaking the covenant? The answer is, "Yes, but not immediately." As the rest of the Scripture unfolds, God was patient and forbearing with the Jews giving them innumerable opportunities to change their ways and begin keeping the covenant. They never did. Finally, they committed their most abominable offense by rejecting the Messiah, God's Son, and were told that "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it" (Matt. 21:43). According to Jesus’ own words, the crown promised to Israel's head would be placed upon another.
The terms of the covenant were clear, and God would not simply turn a blind eye to Israel's idolatry. Indeed, He could not, for that would be denying Himself and His own righteous nature. Israel might forget the if of their relationship, but God certainly would not. God would (and did) indeed keep His promises to Israel. He destroyed them for breaking His covenant, landing the final blow in AD70.
The termination of the Old Covenant was affirmed by the author of Hebrews who spoke of it as “obsolete” and “disappearing” (Heb. 8:13). God’s relationship with geo-political Israel is over, the divorce is complete (cp. Jer. 3:8). Any hope of a special relationship with God is now the same for the Jew as for the Gentile—joining the New Covenant through faith in Jesus Christ.