Victor Hamilton on Exodus 34:27-28

If Moses is the writer referred to in v. 27, the Lord must be the subject referred to in v. 28b. There are several reasons for this (Moberly 1983: 103). First, in “he was there . . . he ate . . . he drank . . . he wrote,” one might expect that because the first three subjects of the verb are Moses, then more than likely Moses is also the subject of the fourth “he.” This is not necessarily so. Hebrew can shift the subject of third-person verb within the same sentence without clearly indicating so, such as we observed in 34:5 (see comments there). Second, making the Lord the subject of the verb in v. 28b makes the claim of that verse consistent with 34:1 (and with Deut. 10:4). Otherwise, there is a blatant inconsistency between the identity of the writer of the Decalogue in 34:1 and 34:28b. Third, in v. 27 the Lord tells Moses to write down “these words” (2x), while v. 28 uses other phraseology, “the words of the covenant—the Ten Words.” If Moses is the writer in v. 28b, then one would expect the language to echo v. 27, that is, “And he [Moses] wrote these words.” Fourth, the note in v. 28a (Moses’s forty-day fast) would more than likely have followed v. 28b rather than preceded it, if Moses were the writer in v. 27 and 28b. Why break up two references to the same author’s scribal activities through this parenthetical remark?

See Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary.