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Wednesday 9/09/26
Thru the Bible: Old Testament Review – Exodus Pt. 4
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Thru the Bible: Old Testament Review – Exodus Pt. 4
Last week we left off with two things:
God’s conversation with Moses regarding Israel’s request for God not to speak to them directly again lest they die. God agreed with them, knowing that because they did not have the right heart in them – a Moses, Joshua or Caleb heart -they would eventually never survive ongoing encounters with God. We also saw in the text that this was something about which God experienced a sense of loss – something His heart longed for, but which necessity made temporarily impossible.
And
The sins of the fathers, which was and is something wildly misunderstood. By looking at the retelling of this in Deuteronomy and in Ezekiel we realized that this is talking about each person or generation bearing their own iniquity rather than one generation being punished for the actions of their parents.
Then I left you with the cliffhanger of God calling Moses to the top of the mountain for 40 days. So let’s go there, it is found In Exodus 24.
Here is the time God gave Moses the plans for Israel’s religious life.
It is anyone’s guess to what degree this was impacted by the decisions that went before this, but I imagine it was profound. We have gone from God having everyone purify themselves and appearing before Him as He comes down on the mountain to speak with the whole assembly – to a system of priests who do this FOR Israel. They must purify themselves and enter a tabernacle in which God’s presence presides between the Cherubs on the top of the Ark of the Testimony – and even then it’s only the High Priest once a year. Though of course God would meet with Moses and Aaron and communicate through them as well.
Notice that while Miriam was also a sibling by marriage, and was herself a prophetess, we have no record of God speaking directly to Miriam except when He corrected both she and Aaron for their overstepping and challenging Moses’ authority. Now God does speak THROUGH her – and though we only have the one example of her prophetic song she led the women of Israel in with dancing before the Lord, no doubt there were more times. Now by this I am NOT saying God never spoke to her directly other than this, only that in matters of leadership over Israel – she was never included and that is an ongoing precedent we see throughout scripture in matters of authority. This is even true regarding Deborah if one studies the passage for what it does and does not say and positively affirm.
Now in this meeting of Moses and God, all of the entrapping’s of external religious worship were addressed.
This included the courtyard, the altar, the bazen laver, the tabernacle itself, the Ark of the Covenant, the incense altar, the showbread table and the Menorah as well as the priestly garments and their inauguration ceremony.
The Golden Calf, Moses’ passion & God’s mercy
Then in Exodus 32 God tells Moses about Israel’s idolatry and they have one of the most famous conversations in all biblical history. It has a direct connection with the one Moses and God had just before this regarding God no longer addressing Israel directly and how that wounded God’s heart.
This back and forth with Moses, and where it eventually leads reveals the emotions and desires of God’s heart with mankind.
I also want you to pay attention to the words God chooses. I think you will see that He is deliberately baiting Moses to respond in a very particular way, which is also very instructional! (Freewill, being guided by God knowing man’s heart)
“(7) And the LORD said to Moses,
“Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. (8) They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” (9) And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. (10) Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
(11) But Moses implored the LORD his God and said,
“O LORD, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people, whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
(12) Why should the Egyptians say,
‘With evil intent did He bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’?
Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against Your people.
(13) Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your Own self, and said to them,
‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’”
(14) And the LORD relented from the disaster that He had spoken of bringing on His people.” – Exodus 32:7-14
This is a major and theologically revealing dialogue with several points.
To begin with , this is the FIRST time in the Exodus account that God verbally disassociates Himself with Israel.
Just two weeks ago we saw how God told Moses to remind Israel that “(4)‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. (5) And now, 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, (6) and you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’” – Exodus 19:4-6
So we see a dramatic shift in God’s language but I want you to notice that God does not miss a beat. He is consistent in all He thinks, says and does.
Also, as we will see in a few moments, God does not ever do anything with half a heart. Unlike human hearts, God’s heart cannot be divided and that is of immeasurable importance both in coming to know God, in understanding His actions and interactions throughout scripture and, more importantly, in our own personal interactions with Him. Knowing this, will keep you from slipping into considerations regarding what God is thinking or doing or how we might expect Him to respond which are, in reality, not even possible for Him.
So let’s start with what God said in Exodus 19 and compare it to what He just said in Exodus 32.
They were called God’s people, who He had brought to Himself. THEN He makes a conditional statement.
“…now, 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, (6) and you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” – Exodus 19:5-6
Had Israel kept their part of this? No! They broke the 1st and greatest commandment as well as the second.
God calls them Moses’ people, who he had brought up out of Egypt.
So while I believe more is going on here, God is not reacting to Israel in spite, neither is He simply baiting Moses to intercede. These are real responses which are conditioned upon the words He had spoken to them from the beginning.
Israel is on a precipice between the mountain of God’s love, mercy and intentions for Israel and the justice which is required in response to their actions.
Remember, it was Israel who committed to God in saying, “All that God has commanded we will do and be obedient.” [Exodus 19:8 & 24:3,7] No one made them vow this allegiance, they offered it freely.
However, there does appear to be baiting language here. God calling Israel Moses’ people is consistent with these words He had spoken. Nothing in God’s previous promise required Him to continue to call them His people if they did not obey. BUT, while it was true that Moses played an integral part in delivering Israel and bringing them up out of Egypt, we know from the same passage in Exodus 19:5, that it was by God’s power and directive that Moses was able to bring them out and that it was in order to bring Israel to Himself!
So in saying, “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.” God was clearly evoking out of Moses a response to intercede for Israel.
So what really happened here?
The Hebrew verb נָחַם (nācham) carries a range of emotional and relational meanings centered on a deep, inward change. Its primary sense is “to be sorry, to have compassion, or to comfort.”
Strong’s gives the word’s basic etymology as a primitive root, properly meaning “to sigh, i.e. breathe strongly” — by implication: “to be sorry“; in a favorable sense: “to pity, console“;
So the most ancient recoverable meaning of the root points toward a physical act of deep breathing or sighing — the kind of involuntary bodily response that accompanies strong emotion. From that physical anchor, the semantic range fans out in multiple directions.
When nācham appears in the Niphal, it does not simply mean someone “repented” or “changed their mind” in an abstract sense. The Niphal form bends the word toward the reflexive or internally-directed range: the subject undergoes something within themselves — a turning, a relenting, a being moved. It is not a dispassionate administrative course-correction. The grammar insists on interiority and relational response.
In Exodus 32:12, Moses had just used the same root as an imperative — “relent [nācham] from your fierce wrath!” — calling on YHWH to undergo this inward turning. Verse 14 then reports that YHWH did exactly that.
The word nacham can mean “to repent of having done something wrong,” “to change one’s mind,” or — and this is critical to the context — “to repent and change the mind— to relent or have compassion.”
(1 Samuel 15:29 clarifies God does not “repent” as humans do)
- What did God inwardly change His mind about?
- Did God change His mind of Israel’s deserving of Judgment? No
- Did God change His mind in that He saw that what He was about to do was an emotional outburst that upon reconsidering He decided against it? No
It was regarding the punishment.
Notice the words, “He relented regarding the harm”
This word translated by words like “evil, harm, disaster…etc.” is the Hebrew word רַע (raʿ), one of the most semantically broad words in the Hebrew lexicon. In this verse, it refers not to some moral failing of YHWH, but to the catastrophic harm He had declared He would bring upon Israel. This harm is centered on the perspective of what Israel would experience.
The Septuagint was very helpful with this because it predates the Masoretic by over 1,000 years and shows us how ancient Jewish translators understood the Hebrew.
The LXX text of Exodus 32:14 reads:
καὶ ἱλάσθη κύριος περὶ τῆς κακίας ἧς εἶπεν ποιῆσαι τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ
“And the Lord was hilasthē concerning the harm/wickedness which He said He would do to His people.”
It is a profound word choice they made in this translation. Rather than using the traditional word for repent which is metanoeō (μετανοέω — “to change one’s mind, repent“). They chose the aorist passive form of ἱλάσκομαι (hilaskomai) — Strong’s G2433.
This is a radically different word. It is a word from the cultic/sacrificial vocabulary of the Greek world meaning “to appease God, or make Him favorable, so that His wrath could be averted.”
Here in Exodus 32:14, the verb affects God directly: God is turned away from the harm He had planned for Israel in His justice. It is not a cleansing which is in view — it is all about God’s heart of justice and mercy.
What the LXX translators did is striking: they took the Hebrew nācham — a word about inner emotional/relational turning — and rendered it with hilaskomai, a word that in Greek carried the nuance of a god being appeased or made favorable.
This is not a neutral or mechanical word swap. The LXX translators were interpreting what they understood to be happening: Moses‘ intercession functioned as a propitiatory act, causing YHWH to be turned from wrath to mercy toward the people.
The Greek word choice focuses on the effect on God’s disposition toward Israel, whereas the Hebrew nācham centers on the internal experience of turning/relenting itself.
Both describe the same event but from different angles: the Hebrew is more phenomenological (about an interior turning), while the Greek is more relational (the divine disposition being altered towards favor).
The text is not making an abstract theological proposition; it is recording a specific, located event: “And then YHWH relented.” This grammatical form anchors the word to a concrete historical narration rather than a timeless statement.
In Summary:
Together, the ancient Hebrew and the Septuagint Greek converge on this: what happened in Exodus 32:14 is described in both texts as a real, inward, relational turning — not merely a change in external outcomes but a change in orientation, a relenting rooted in something deep and emotional, in direct response to Moses‘ intercession on behalf of the people.
This is what I meant earlier, that God does not do anything from half-a-heart. What makes a thing right or wrong is its orientation to the person and heart of God. God Himself does not change, but His heart responds to events and people changes as the circumstances develop. This is why God often employs conditional language as He did in saying “If you will obey, you will be My people…etc.”
What about Moses interceding made this change possible?
You remember, God had capitulated to Israel and allowed for Moses to be their mediator. This was not so much a condition of the covenant they ratified in Exodus 24, but it was a precursor to that arrangement which all parties had already agreed to – Moses, Israel and God. All of this predates this incident. So Moses, as Israel’s officially recognized and instituted leader with authority vested in Him by God, was fully vetted to assume this role.
God knew this was coming and so interacted with Israel and Moses in such a way as to lead to this outcome without circumventing freewill.
Now God had already had favor upon Moses from birth and onward through several intercession and encounters with him.
- He was protected from Pharoah’s decree at birth.
- He was reared in Pharoah’s house.
- He was protected from Pharoah’s wrath regarding the guard Moses killed.
- He found favor in Midian with Jethro.
- God gave Moses an encounter with Him at the burning bush.
- God pronounced a calling over Moses’ life and favored him with Aaron’s aid.
- God was with him in his dealings with Pharoah.
- God conferred authority upon Moses with the symbol of his leadership in his shepherd’s staff.
- God began speaking and meeting with Moses before anyone else in Israel.
So when this incident happened following the 40 days on the mountain, Moses’ authority as leader and official mediator between God and Israel as well as God’s ongoing favor on Moses’ life had already been firmly established. Additionally, it is important that Moses was also part of this covenant God cut with Israel in Exodus 24.
While Moses was the one officiating the covenant, be was also included in it in that the blood was on his hands in its being poured out on the altar and the people, the fact that the covenant was with Israel and Moses was an Israelite and finally because he participated in the covenant meal that followed the covenant ceremony –
“Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the 70 elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel… they saw God, and they ate and drank.” — [Exodus 24].
I am not sure to what degree, but this seems very much connected to the time Abram interceded with God for Sodom and Gomorrah – and in particular Lot and his family.
Genesis 18:17-19,
“(17) The LORD said,
“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, (18) seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? (19) For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has promised him.”
Notice that the basis for God informing Abraham was His covenant with him which included his family as well as the nations of the earth.
All of this reveals the heart of God, the justice of God, the mercy of God, the foresight and wisdom of God as well as the power of God.
The way in which God draws intercession out of the heart of His leaders by telling the truth. It shows one of the ways in which God’s mercy triumphs over judgment.
Next is a passage in Exodus 33.
You may remember how I told you on Sunday that covenants are for intimacy and I pointed to Hosea 6:6 which says,
“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
The rest of this lesson illustrates what I am talking about.
Exodus 33:1-23,
“(1) The LORD said to Moses,
“Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying,
‘To your offspring I will give it.’
(2) I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
(3) Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
(4) When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. (5) For the LORD had said to Moses,
“Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’”
(6) Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.
(7) Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it “the tent of meeting”.
And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
(8) Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.
(9) When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses. (10) And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door.
(11) Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.
When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
(12) Moses said to the LORD,
“See, you say to me,
‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom You will send with me.
Yet You have said,
‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’
(13) Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know You in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is Your people.”
(14) And He said,
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
(15) And he said to him,
“If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. (16) For how shall it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and Your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
(17) And the LORD said to Moses,
“This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in My sight, and I know you by name.”
(18) Moses said,
“Please show me Your glory.”
(19) And He said,
“I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My name ‘The LORD.’
And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (20) But,” he said, “you cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.”
(21) And the LORD said,
“Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock, (22) and while My glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by. (23) Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
Here again God refers to Israel as Moses’ people, whom he had brought up out of Egypt.
He tells Moses that He will send His angel before them to drive out the inhabitants of the lands of the Canaanite, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, but that He would not go with them, lest He consume them on the way because Israel is a stiff necked people.
Notice the change in language here as we did earlier:
“I Will Be with You“ – Exodus 3:12 changes to “An Angel Will Go Before You” – Exodus 23:20,23; 32:34 & 33:2
- The Context: Shortly after the golden calf incident, in Exodus 33, God tells Moses to lead the people to the Promised Land.
- The Shift: Though God used this language of the Angel going before them all the way back in Exodus 23, He seems to go one step further here in saying that He will not be going along in their midst personally, “I will send an angel before thee… for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people“ (Exodus 33:2-3).
- The Meaning: The language shifts from intimate divine presence to a mediated, distant guidance. Moses immediately recognizes this demotion and successfully pleads for God’s personal presence to remain with them.
So Moses intercedes for Israel AND his own future. He reveals his own emotions and heart which offers us some insight as to why God called this precious man.
Exodus 33:12-23,
“(12) Moses said to the LORD,
Yet You have said,
‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’
(13) Now therefore, if I have found favor in Your sight, please show me now Your ways, that I may know You in order to find favor in Your sight.
This is covenant language which our generation can, to some degree, be excused for not immediately picking up on. I will expand on this in a moment after we have taken in the whole of the dialogue.
Consider too that this nation is Your people.”
(14) And He said,
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
(15) And he said to him,
“If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. (16) For how shall it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and Your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
(17) And the LORD said to Moses,
“This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in My sight, and I know you by name.”
(18) Moses said,
“Please show me Your glory.”
When Moses says “If I have found favor in your sight, then show me favor by…” two things are happening.
First he is NOT questioning IF he has obtained favor, he is literally quoting back to God what God had just said. In other words, Moses is using the language of his current covenant relationship with God as the basis for coming to God with an appeal and eventually as the basis for coming to know God more.
Moses is not simply asking for a larger quantity of the favor already possessed, but using the favor he currently possesses as the reason for God’s not abandoning them as a well as the basis to request true intimacy with God.
The word for “ways” דְּרָכֶיךָ (derakekha) is deliberately not pointing to more laws, commandments or rules but something far more personal.
In the sense of manner of being, characteristic patterns, the how of Who God is.
It is in fact, a request for intimate knowledge of God’s character and nature.
“That I may know You” — uses יָדַע (yada), which in Hebrew carries its deepest relational sense here. This is not cognitive information-gathering. It is the language of personal, experiential knowing.
Moses is saying that the favor he already has is perhaps formal or positional, but what he wants is the favor that comes from actual intimacy with Who God is.
The request essentially saying this:
“Since You have confirmed I stand in Your favor — use that as the basis to show me who You actually are, so that the favor between us becomes the favor of one who truly knows You, not merely one You have appointed.”
This reading is supported by God’s response in verse 14.
“My presence will go with you“.
Moses, now elated by this grand forward gesture says in what almost appears like an eruption of heart felt passion in verse 18 — “Please show me Your glory“.
Moses is pushing toward something deeper than the legal, covenant positional standing of a mediator and covenant partner. He is after an actual encounter with God’s Own person.
So Moses is not questioning here IF he has favor, but is acknowledging the favor God has already given and in doing so draws even closer to Him requesting a deepening of the quality and depth of relationship that results in a real, relational knowing in true intimacy.
(19) And He said,
“I will make all My goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you My name ‘The LORD.’
And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (20) But,” he said, “you cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.”
(21) And the LORD said,
“Behold, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock, (22) and while My glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by. (23) Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
Oh my! This is the thing Jacob asked of God and was denied, no doubt because his relationship with God was more reactionary than relational.
This is not merely a title being spoken. In the ancient Near Eastern context, and within the logic of scripture, a name carried the full weight of character, nature, and relational identity. To proclaim the name was to disclose the person.
Jacob has asked for the name directly → it is withheld → he is blessed but not given what he asked for.
In contrast, Moses asks to see God’s for glory → God responds by voluntarily proclaiming the name → and not just the name as a label but the name unpacked into its relational and moral content.
What Jacob was refused, Moses received — and received in a form richer than Jacob’s request even envisioned.
Jacob wanted the name. God gave Moses the name plus its meaning, its character content, its relational texture.
Why the Difference?
In Jacob’s case:
- The encounter is a wrestling match — combative, physical, in the dark
- Jacob’s posture is one of demanding — “I will not let you go unless You bless me“
- The question back — “why do you ask My name?” — carries a tone that in Hebrew rhetoric often signals either rebuke or the inadequacy of the question itself.
- Jacob is at the very beginning of his transformation — he leaves the encounter limping, renamed, but not yet the man Israel will become.
In Moses’ case:
- The request flows out of sustained relational dialogue which we see developing across chapters 32-33
- Moses has already interceded for Israel, God has already spoken with him “face to face as a man speaks with his friend” (33:11)
- The request for glory comes after Moses has already been bold enough to say “if Your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here” (33:15) — a remarkable negotiating posture that God honors
- God’s response in 33:19 before the proclamation is: “I will make all My goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you“ — God is volunteering the name, not being asked for it
The relational ground Moses stands on when he asks is qualitatively different from where Jacob stood. And this passage ultimately seems to reflect that difference in what God gives Moses.
The significance of the name proclaimed — Exodus 34:6-7
It is worth sitting with what God actually does here because it is without parallel in the Torah in terms of God self-disclosing His Own character.
He proclaims יְהוָה יְהוָה — His name doubled.
This doubling in Hebrew is not a redundancy. It is intensification and emphasis — as though the name itself is being leaned into, fully inhabited in the speaking of it.
Then follow seven or eight distinct characterizations depending on how the Hebrew is parsed:
- רַחוּם — merciful, compassionate, from the root rechem meaning womb — the most intimate Hebrew word for tender love
- חַנּוּן — gracious, from chanan — unearned favor
- אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם — literally “long of nostrils” — the Hebrew idiom for patience, slow to anger
- רַב-חֶסֶד — abounding in chesed — the covenant loyalty/loving-kindness word, the most relationally loaded word in the Hebrew Bible
- וֶאֱמֶת — and faithfulness/truth — emet, reliability, trustworthiness
This is not a legal description; it is deeply, penetratingly intimate. THIS is what God wanted with ALL of Israel and at least He gets it with His man Moses!
It is not a list of powers or attributes of divine sovereignty. It is an inside account of Who God is in relationship.
It is precisely what Moses desired and more — the ways of God, for the purpose of knowing God — given back to him in the most intimate form available.
What God does here for Moses is recognizably similar to what Jacob requested, but the differences are as important as the similarities:
- Jacob asked for the name and received silence on the name, a blessing, and a limp.
- Moses asked for glory and received the name proclaimed voluntarily, unpacked relationally, in an act of divine self-disclosure that the text presents as the most complete revelation of God’s character anywhere in the Torah.
If Jacob’s request was reaching toward something — trying to grasp the identity of the one he had been wrestling with — then what Moses receives is what Jacob was reaching for, given not in response to a demand but as a free act of God toward someone with whom He was already in a qualitatively deeper relational standing.
It is significant that it is within THIS context that God says He will show mercy to whom He will show mercy and whom He will He will harden.
SO MUCH IS MISSED in this statement because people approach phrases like this in ignorance and fear, yet even in the New Testament where Paul references this in Romans 9, it was not to evoke terror but respect. It was intended to encourage proper alignment with God in reverential fear – not stark terror as God was somehow unjust.
This is not a cold, methodical revelation of a God Who chooses one and denies another upon whim.
Though Jacob was not hardened, and is not even really referenced by name in this encounter, the idea is that of heart to heart.
- Moses longed for God and God accommodated that lavishly.
- Jacob simply wanted FROM God, and God blesses him and wounds him, but does not enter into intimacy with him.
We know from the scriptures that God shows mercy to the merciful and He gives grace to the humble.
We also know from scripture that those who resist Him, are accommodated with a heart that is not just callus, which is in fact the result of their responses to God’s invitations, but one that is truly hardened – which is God’s sovereign work which He judicially seals in accordance with one’s inward decisions.
THAT is why it is not of the one who runs or the one who works, but of God. The final, judicial decree emanates from the God of all Creation for it is He alone Who Owns all hearts. Like we read last week regarding judgment of the fathers and the sons.
“(4) Look, every life belongs to Me. The life of the father is like the life of the son–both belong to Me. The person who sins is the one who will die.” – Exodus 18:4
Notice it does NOT say, the person I unilaterally decide to kill will die or the one I unilaterally cause to rebel or even cause to continue in rebellion, but rather the one who sins will die.
