None shall appear before Me empty-handed. (21) Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor; you shall cease from labor even at plowing time and harvest time. (22) You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest; and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. (23) Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. (24) I will drive out nations from your path and enlarge your territory; no one will covet your land when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times a year. (25) You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened; and the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover shall not be left lying until morning. (26) The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God.
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
God Teaches Moses how to pray
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Moses, having secured the people’s forgiveness [after the sin of the Golden Calf], asks God to show him His glory (Ex. 33:18). God tells Moses to stand in the crevice of a rock. There God will cause His glory to pass by. Moses will not be able to see God directly, “for no
one may see Me and live,” but he will come as close as is possible for a human being. God passed before him and proclaimed what became known as Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (Ex. 34:5–7). Note that God speaks these words, not Moses.
What is God doing at this point? The answer becomes clear only two books later, in the book of Numbers. It is then that the people commit another sin as grievous as the making of the golden calf. Moses had sent spies to look at the land. They had come back with a demoralizing report. The land is indeed good, they said, flowing with milk and honey. But the people are strong. Their cities are highly fortified. We will not be able to defeat them. They are giants. We are grasshoppers (Num. 13).
At this point the people, despondent and hopeless, say, “Let’s choose a leader and go back to Egypt” (Num. 14:4). As He did at the time of the golden calf, God threatens to destroy the people and begin a nation anew with Moses. Again Moses prays to God to forgive the people, for His sake if not for theirs. Then he adds a new element to his prayer: “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as You have declared: “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness, forgiving iniquity and rebellion.” Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. In accordance with Your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as You have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” (Num. 14:17–19)
Moses is doing something he has not done before. Previously he has prayed on the basis of how God’s acts will look to the world, and on the basis of His covenant with the patriarchs. Now he is praying on the basis of God’s own nature. He is, as it were, recalling God to Himself. Essentially he is repeating what God Himself had said at Mount Sinai. He says so. He says, “as You have declared,” as if to say, “These are Your words, not mine.” Only now do we fully understand what God was doing on that previous occasion. He was teaching Moses how to pray.