33
📚And the LORD said to Moses, “Depart, and go up from here, you and the people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, I will give it to your offspring. 2 📚And I will send an angel 📖 before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite 📖. 3 📚Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey. Since you are a stiffnecked people I will not go up among you, so that I may not consume you on the way”.4 📚And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and none of them put on his ornaments.
5 📚For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiffnecked people. If I come up among you for a moment, I will consume you. Therefore now put your ornaments away from you, so that I may know what to do to you”. 6 📚And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb.
The tent of meeting
7 📚Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, at a distance from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And it came about that anyone who sought the LORD went out to the tent 📖 of meeting which was outside the camp. 8 📚And it was like this: when Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose up, and each one stood at his tent door, and looked after Moses until he had gone into the tent. 9 📚And it came about as Moses went into the tent, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tent, and the LORD talked with Moses. 10 📚And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tent door, and all the people rose up and worshipped, each one in his tent door. 11 📚And the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When he returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not go out of the tent.
33:11 Num 12:8; Deut 34:10. The Lord probably appeared to Moses in the form of a man or an angel (Gen 18:12).⚜
Moses asks to see God’s glory
12 📚And Moses said to the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people’, and you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and also you have found grace in my sight.’
33:12 Ex 33:2. Moses was not satisfied with a promise of an angel to accompany them.⚜
13 📚So now, I pray you, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way, so that I may know you, so that I may find grace in your sight. And consider that this nation is your people”.
14 📚And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest”.
33:14 God’s presence was the one thing Moses wanted above all else. God’s presence alone can give rest (Deut 12:10; 25:19; Josh 21:44; 22:4; Isa 14:3; 30:15; Matt 11:28-29; Heb 4:9.)⚜
15 📚And he said to him, “If your presence does not go with me, do not take us up from here. 16 📚For now how can it be known that I and your people have found grace in your sight? Is it not by your going with us? So we will be separated, I and your people, from all the people on the face of the earth”.
17 📚And the LORD said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have said, for you have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name”.
18 📚And he said, “I pray you, show me your glory”.
33:18 Another great request. The whole Bible is the story of God’s glory, from the old creation in Genesis chapter 1 (Ps 19:1), to the new creation in Revelation chapters 21 and 22 (Rev 21:23). See Ex 40:34-35; Num 14:21; Deut 5:24; 1 Kings 8:11; Ps 8:1; 72:19; Isa 6:3; 40:5; 59:19; Ezek 1:28; 43:2; Matt 16:27; 17:2; 24:30; John 1:14; 17:5, 24; Acts 7:2; Rom 1:23; 5:2; 2 Cor 4:6; Col 1:27; Heb 1:3; Jam 2:1; Jude 24-25; Rev 1:6, 14-17; 4:11; 21:11.⚜
19 📚And he said, “I will make all my goodness 📖 pass before you, and I will proclaim the name 📖 of the LORD before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy 📖”. 20 📚And he said, “You cannot see my face, for no man shall see me, and live”.
33:20 John 1:18; 1 Tim 6:16 While as fallen sinful creatures we cannot not see God's face and live, there is coming a time at the establishment of God's eternal Kingdom on earth, when God's people will be clothed in their glorified and incorruptible bodies and they shall see Him face to face (Rev 22:4). This is the true longing of the believer.⚜
21 📚And the LORD said, “Look, there is a place by me, and you shall stand on a rock 📖. 22 📚And it shall come about, when my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand when I pass by, 23 📚and I will take away my hand, and you will see my back. But my face will not be seen”.