Deuteronomy 10:1-11
The Lord preserves His covenant people after rebellion by renewing His word, ordering worshipful service, receiving mediation, and sending them forward toward the promise He swore to give.
1 At that time Yahweh said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood.
2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.”
3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two stone tablets like the first, and went up onto the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand.
4 He wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which Yahweh spoke to you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire in the day of the assembly; and Yahweh gave them to me.
5 I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are as Yahweh commanded me.
6 (The children of Israel traveled from Beeroth Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest’s office in his place.
7 From there they traveled to Gudgodah; and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of brooks of water.
8 At that time Yahweh set apart the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of Yahweh’s covenant, to stand before Yahweh to minister to him, and to bless in his name, to this day.
9 Therefore Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brothers; Yahweh is his inheritance, according as Yahweh your God spoke to him.)
10 I stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights; and Yahweh listened to me that time also. Yahweh would not destroy you.
11 Yahweh said to me, “Arise, take your journey before the people; and they shall go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give to them.”
The LORD preserves His covenant people after rebellion by renewing His word, ordering worshipful service, receiving mediation, and sending them forward toward the promise He swore to give.
Moses shows Israel that after their covenant-breaking rebellion at Horeb, the LORD mercifully renewed the tablets, preserved the covenant testimony in the ark, set apart the Levitical ministry, listened to intercession, withheld destruction, and commanded the people to continue toward the promised land.
Moses continues his retrospective sermon east of the Jordan, immediately following his rehearsal of Israel's golden calf rebellion and his intercession. The passage recalls the covenant renewal after Horeb, the preservation of the tablets in the ark, the death of Aaron and succession of Eleazar, the setting apart of Levi, and the LORD's command to continue toward the land promised to the fathers.
New Tablets, Circumcised Hearts, and the God Who Loves the Stranger
The LORD's renewal of the covenant after the golden calf — making new tablets, re-establishing the Levitical priesthood, and continuing to march with Israel — grounds the covenant's restoration entirely in his own initiative and character, and the appropriate human response is not a transaction but a transformation: circumcision of the heart, walking in all his ways, and loving the stranger because the covenant God is himself the one who loves the stranger.