Exodus33chapter 33

Exodus 33:1-2

The march resumes and the land is still promised, since the oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is repeated in full after the calf. What God holds back is himself, and an angel is offered in his place, the same offer made at 23:20 and repeated at 32:34. The promise of Genesis 15 stands after chapter 32, and what is now in question is the company on the road.

Exodus 33:3

a land flowing with milk and honey: The offer is the gift without the giver, a good land and a withdrawn presence. The reason God gives is mercy rather than anger, that his presence in the middle of a stiffnecked people would consume them on the road. The word stiffnecked entered Scripture nine verses into the calf chapter at 32:9, and here it is the ground on which God says he will keep his distance.

Exodus 33:4-6

The people mourn at the withdrawal, and the sign of the mourning is that no man puts on his ornaments. God's own order at verse 5 leaves the outcome open, put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee, so the stripping is a posture taken before a decision rather than after one. The gold that went into the calf at 32:2 and 32:3 comes off here, and the same kind of freewill gold is brought for the tabernacle at 35:22. Verse 6 sets the scene by mount Horeb, the mountain of the bush at 3:1 and of the water from the rock at 17:6.

Exodus 33:7-8

This is a tent Moses takes and sets outside the settlement, seven chapters before the tabernacle of chapters 35 to 40 is built, and he gives it the name that structure will later carry. The place of meeting stands outside the camp that made the calf, so every man who sought the LORD had to walk out of the camp in the open to reach it. Verse 8 has the whole people standing at their own tent doors watching Moses go, which makes the walk itself public.

Exodus 33:9-10

The cloudy pillar that led the march at 13:21 and stood between the two armies at 14:19 comes down and takes its place at a tent door. The people worship from where they are, every man in his own tent door, which is as near as this chapter lets them come. The width of the whole camp lies between the pillar at that door and the people at theirs.

Exodus 33:11

Nine verses further on, the same chapter says thou canst not see my face, and Exodus lets both sentences stand. Numbers 12:8 uses mouth to mouth of this same relationship, and John 1:18 says that no man hath seen God at any time and that the only begotten Son hath declared him. The verse also leaves Joshua inside the tent after Moses goes back to the camp, the same Joshua who led the fighting against Amalek at 17:9.

Exodus 33:12-13

Moses argues from what God has already said to him, quoting two sentences back, I know thee by name and thou hast found grace in my sight. What he asks for is to be shown the way in order to know God himself, so knowledge of God is the request and the errand is the reason he gives for it. The last clause hands the calf argument back where it started, since God said thy people to Moses at 32:7 and Moses answered thy people at 32:11, and here he asks God to consider that this nation is thy people.

Exodus 33:14

The angel of verse 2 gives way to the presence itself, which is the whole of what Moses had been asking for. Rest is added to the promise without being asked for, and the rest promised to that generation is the subject Psalm 95:8-11 takes up and Hebrews 3:7 to 4:11 applies to its own readers. The Hebrew behind presence here is the word for face, so the sentence reads my face shall go, six verses before God says that no man can see that face and live.

Exodus 33:15-16

Moses turns down the land on the terms offered and asks to be left where he stands rather than to go up with less. His reason at verse 16 is that the presence is the one mark that separates Israel from all the people that are upon the face of the earth, since a nation with a law and a land and no God in the middle of it looks like the rest. This is his fourth intervention in three chapters, after 32:11-14, 32:31-32 and the plea of verses 12 and 13, and at 34:9 he will make the stiff neck itself his reason for asking God to come along.

Exodus 33:17-18

God grants the request and repeats the ground twice over, that Moses has found grace in his sight and is known by name. The man who has just been given everything he asked for asks for one thing more, and it is four words long, shew me thy glory. It is the shortest speech in the chapter and it is the one God answers with a limit.

Exodus 33:19

In place of the sight of his glory God offers his goodness and his name, and 34:5-7 is where that promise is kept. The content of the name is mercy first, and it is proclaimed to a nation that had made a calf three chapters earlier. Paul quotes the close of this verse at Romans 9:15 and quotes Exodus 9:16 about Pharaoh two verses later, so both halves of his argument there are drawn out of this book.

Exodus 33:20

The limit is put as a fact about man, for there shall no man see me, and live. Verse 11 said face to face, 24:10 and 24:11 said that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the seventy elders saw the God of Israel and did eat and drink, and this sentence stands beside both of them without adjustment. John 1:18 and John 1:14 are where the New Testament takes the question up, and readings of the earlier sightings as appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ are held by named writers rather than stated by Exodus.

Exodus 33:21-23

The answer to the request is a place, a rock and a hand. Moses is put in a clift of the rock and covered while the glory passes, so the covering is what makes the sight survivable, and what he is left with at the end is the back parts. Horeb is where a rock was struck for water at 17:6, and 1 Corinthians 10:4 says that Rock was Christ. Reading this particular cleft as a shelter in Christ is a tradition rather than a claim of the text, and Augustus Toplady carried the image into English hymnody in Rock of Ages.