Although Moses had a more immediate and intimate relationship with God than any other human on the planet, he still could not see the fullness of God’s glory and goodness and still live. Again, even though God spoke to Moses face to face and even though it was God’s face that would go with him and the people of Israel, those are metaphorical ways of speaking. Like all other sinful men (which is all of us), Moses could not behold the unfiltered glory of God and attempting to do so would be deadly. Therefore, Yahweh would hide Moses under the shelter of a rock.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I think Lewis is absolutely right. We do not wander into sin because our desires are too strong but because they are too weak towards the One who is altogether desirable. It was Israel’s weak desire that led to their creating the golden calf, for they were willing to abandon their worship of the Almighty Creator for a dumb image of an animal that they themselves had made.
Thus far, although God has relented from destroying Israel altogether, the people are still waiting for their great sin to be resolved. In our previous passage, Yahweh ordered Moses to lead the people into Canaan, yet He refused to go with them. This set before them a perilous but necessary decision: did they want God Himself or only the gifts that He could give them? Thankfully, Israel seemed to somewhat understand how disastrous the thought of being abandoned by God is.
In our present text, we sit in on a dialogue between Yahweh and Moses, and we discover by Moses was the great mediator of the Old Testament and a shadow and type of Christ our Lord. Our text can be divided into two general parts. Verses 12-17 show Moses’ renewed intercession on Israel’s behalf, and verses 18-23 describe Moses’ personal request from the LORD.
Do Not Bring Us Up from Here // Verses 12-17
In describing how Moses established a temporary tent of meeting outside of Israel’s camp, our previous text ended by describing Moses’ relationship with Yahweh as such: “Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” In this second half of chapter 33, we are invited to listen in on one of Moses’ conversations with the LORD.
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.’ 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.”
In verses 12-13, Moses establishes his first request. He begins by addressing the most recent command that God had given him back in verse 1. The LORD had commanded him leave Sinai and take the Israelites into Canaan, the land of milk and honey that God had promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To this command, Moses lays out his first concern: but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Of course, Yahweh had said that He would not go with them but would only send one of His angels before them. Moses was now drawing on that ambiguity and asking for clarification. As we will see, he is ultimately leading up to pleading for Yahweh Himself to go with them, but he begins with this question of who precisely God’s messenger was going to be.
Next, Moses draws the LORD’s attention to what He had previously said of Moses, that He knew the prophet by name and had favor toward him. While God will affirm this in verse 17, we can rightly assume that God previously told Moses this during one of their previous conversations. But regarding this favor towards Moses, Ryken explains:
This means much more than simply that God knew who Moses was. That would be true of anyone, because in that sense God knows everyone by name. But here the Bible is speaking of a special knowledge that is full of love and favor. According to John Mackay, for God to “know someone by name” is to embrace that person in “a relationship of acceptance and friendship.” Moses was an object of covenant grace. God knew him in a loving, saving, and electing way. God knows all his children like this. He knew us in our mother’s womb (Ps. 139:13–16). He knew us even before the foundation of the world. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3a). Anyone who is friends with God through faith in Jesus Christ is known and loved by the God who rules the universe.
Then in verse 13 Moses seeks to leverage that favor. If he had truly found favor in God’s sight, then he begged to know God’s ways, in order to know God and find further favor in His sight. By this Moses was asking “to comprehend God’s essential personality, the attributes that guide His actions in His dealings with humankind, the norms by which He operates in His governance of the world.” The LORD will do this very thing in the next chapter, where He will proclaim to Moses His name and character. Indeed, Psalm 103:7-8 explicitly ties these two passages together, saying:
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Thus, while God’s ways to us are certainly mysterious, they are nevertheless clear and plain. Douglas Stuart rightly notes that:
There is little room for mysticism in biblical religion; we do not know God by having some sort of inexplicable ethereal communion with him, in which are feelings are used as the evidence for our closeness to him. We know him by learning his ways (i.e., his revealed standards, revealed methods, and revealed benefits)—in other words by objective, rather than subjective, emotional, means. (701)
Notice also the last statement that Moses throws in at the end: Consider too that this nation is your people. After so heavily emphasizing his own relationship with God, he reminds the LORD again that He has adopted and covenanted Himself to Israel as His own people.
In verse 14, Yahweh answers Moses, saying, My presence with go with you, and I will give you rest. On the surface, this is the exact answer that Moses was hoping for. Although far more glorious than we are, Moses was not content to be led into the Promised Land by an angel; He wanted to the presence of the living God to go with Him. As we said of the bread of the Presence, God is literally saying that His face would go with him. Furthermore, God would give Moses rest. Just as Moses rested in the might of Yahweh throughout the destruction of Egypt, so would he continue to rest in God’s powerful hand as he continued to lead the people.
As wonderful as this promise is, Moses finds fault with it. You see, it is for him alone, not for the people of Israel. Thus, Moses presses on further in his task as mediator, saying in verse 15: If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. Notice how Moses begins by speaking only of himself but ends by tying himself to Israel.