And Moses said to Jehovah, Behold, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people; but thou dost not let me know whom thou wilt send with me; and thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in mine eyes.
Israel has just made the golden calf. God tells Moses to lead the nation on, but does not say who will go with him. So Moses takes two things God had said about him and turns them into an argument for the whole nation.
This is not the first time Moses pleads for Israel. Here he admits he cannot move a step on his own.
For the third time in this whole episode, Moses prays in lovely intercession for Israel (v. 12). The Lord had told him to bring the people up to their land, he says. But he feels helpless to do this without the Lord's presence. Yet, he insists, the Lord had also told him that He knew Moses by name and that Moses had found grace in His sight (v. 12). Since this is true, God must have a way that He could show to Moses.
God had already promised an angel to go before them. Moses treats that as an unanswered question rather than an answer.
He wants first to know whom the Lord would send with him. God had said that He would send an angel (v. 2). But Moses wanted to know more. He asks for this knowledge because the Lord had said to him, "I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight." … Everything now depended on Moses as mediator. So he presents his own cause first, and then he brings the people before God. … It was not enough for Moses that God had appointed him to lead Israel, and that an angel should go before him on the way. He wanted to know God's way through the wilderness, not his own, so that he might also know Him.
The phrase is not a compliment on Moses' record. It describes the relationship God had given him.
Jehovah dealt with Moses according to his faith, according to how far he perceived and grasped God Himself. He appeared before Jehovah truly as a man. Yet he was a man so shaped by the knowledge of God that he thought, spoke and acted in perfect agreement with the mind of God. He came to Jehovah with high human dignity and holy freedom, yet always with deepest reverence. And in everything he said he carried Israel in his heart. God accepted him into a very close relationship with Himself — "I know you by name" — and God received his intercession: he found grace in God's sight.
God gives Moses an opening to walk away from Israel. He will not take it.
What can be more lovely, more like Christ, than this? He uses all the personal confidence that God had in him on behalf of the people. That is the point of it all. … He will not give up his love and desire for Israel. God may treat them as the people of Moses and say, "They are the people you have brought up; they are your people." "Oh no," says Moses. "They are Yours, and You are their only hope." He will not be put off.
Read as a matter of justice, Israel's condition ruled God's presence out. Read through the mediator, it turns into the strongest possible plea.
Moses asks for the accompanying presence of Jehovah as proof that they had found grace in His sight. If it were only a question of justice, He could only consume them by coming among them, since they were "a stiff-necked people." But as soon as He speaks of grace, through the mediator, their very stubbornness becomes the ground for demanding His presence.
What Moses did with Israel's failure, a believer may do with his own.
Why must I insist on having God with me? Because I have this terrible flesh about me. Unless I have Him with me in His grace, I shall never get through the wilderness. My reason is this: I am so bad. And through grace He can have me with Him, despite all my weaknesses.
God says yes. His reason is the very thing Moses had quoted back to Him.
Yet the Lord makes clear why He answers favourably: Moses had found grace in God's sight. The same is true, in the fullest sense, of the Lord Jesus. He has above all found grace in God's sight, and God knows Him by name.
- Cause — after the calf, Israel could go no further on their own. Everything now hung on the mediator's standing with God.
- Gift — "I know you by name" and "you have also found favor in my sight" are God's own words. They mark a close relationship, not a reward for good work.
- Plea — Moses spends that standing on the people. He will not let God call them just "your people."
- Reversal — grace turns the people's stubbornness into the very reason God must come with them.
- Result — God says yes because the mediator has found grace with Him. That points on to Christ, who above all has found grace in God's sight, and whom God knows by name.
(Where the ESV says "favor in my sight," older translations say "grace in my sight." Several quotes above use the older wording.)
And now, if indeed I have found grace in thine eyes, make me now to know thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thine eyes; and consider that this nation is thy people!
Israel had just wrecked the covenant at the golden calf, and God had refused to travel with them. So Moses asks for the one thing that could meet that ruin: to know God Himself.
(The ESV says "your ways" and "favor in your sight." Older translations say "your way" and "grace in your sight," and the writers quoted below follow that older wording.)
Moses does not ask for directions. He asks for the one path that belongs to God, because you know a person by how he acts.
The Spirit of God leads the Christian. His heart is in those ways. As Moses says, Show me Your way — not a way, but Yours — that I may know You. If I know a person's ways, I know him.
What Moses already knew of God could no longer satisfy him. The reason lay in the state of the nation.
What he had so far heard of Him would not do for him. He had already seen Him as the Lawgiver, and as the Lord of the conditional covenant... But such displays of God would not do. Moses was not satisfied. And rightly so. At that very moment Israel lay before his eyes in moral ruins. Everything was finished for them on the terms of the Law, or under their own covenant. So Moses had to see God in God's own way. He must know Him, as he now tells Him — know Him in sovereign grace.
A later psalm shows that God answered this prayer. It separates what the whole nation saw from what Moses came to know.
The Lord displayed His striking acts before the eyes of Israel. These acts of power did not call for an intimate knowledge of the Lord's character; they were plain to everyone. But only the spiritual could discern the ways of God — those dealings that flow from what He is. So we read, "He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel" (Ps. 103:7).
Moses asks again for grace he already has. Then he names the people God would no longer call His own.
"Show me now Your way, that I may know You." There you get knowledge. Then "That I may find grace in Your sight" — not that he had not found grace, but he wanted to know it every moment. "Consider that this nation is Your people." He never forgets God's people, though God would not call them His people. God's presence is the next thing. Moses must know God's way and have His presence.
The very fault that kept God away becomes Moses' reason for asking Him to come.
From this moment Moses presses a new plea. He turns the people's faultiness into a reason why God should go up — the very reason that righteousness had made a ground for refusing to go with them, in case His anger should burn against such a stiff-necked people. But, argues Moses, for this very reason we most of all want the Lord's presence. The boldness of faith is astonishing; but its pleading rests on the known grace of God Himself. In the tabernacle, outside the camp, Moses was near enough to God to see His grace better than he ever had before.
Moses asks for himself before he asks for Israel, and what he asks for is what no appointment or angel could supply.
It was not enough for Moses that God had appointed him to lead Israel, and that an angel should go before him on the path. He wanted to know God's way through the wilderness, not his own, so that he might also know Him. Nothing less than knowing God and God's way could satisfy him — if he were to lead up the people. This is what every believer needs, and there is nothing beyond while in the wilderness.
- Ruin — After the calf the old covenant lay in pieces. What Moses already knew of God "would not do", so he had to see God in sovereign grace.
- Way — He asks not for a way but God's way, because ways reveal the person: know someone's ways and you know him.
- Ways over acts — Israel saw what God did; Moses learned why He did it. Anyone can see God's acts; only the spiritual discern His ways.
- Grace — Moses had already found grace, yet asks for it again — he wanted to know it every moment, not once.
- People — He will not let the nation go, pleading their very stubbornness as the reason God must come. God's answer was His own presence.
And he said, My presence shall go, and I will give thee rest.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And he said to him, If thy presence do not go, bring us not up hence.
Israel had made the golden calf, and God said He would not go up among them. Moses answers that he will not move a step without Him, and he will not take for himself what the people are denied.
God did not cancel the journey. He took Himself out of it.
But then the Lord added something that devastated Moses: "I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people" (v. 3). Could Moses think of leading the people on these terms? Suppose the Lord told us as believers to make our way to heaven as best we can, without His presence. How should we react? If that is how it would be for us personally, how much more helpless must Moses have felt, having to lead over two million people through the wilderness?
Moses speaks this way at Israel's lowest point. Grace already shown to him makes him press for more.
It is painful, and yet also beautiful, to see how God dealt with Moses after the people made the golden calf. While everything lay in ruins, faith under grace can have closer fellowship than when there was no ruin. Moses never had such close fellowship with God as now, when the people had made the calf. And the calf was still in the camp. The way God meets Moses is beautiful: "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." Then Moses grows bolder still, and says, "If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here."
God had just promised Moses, "My presence will go with you." Moses spends that favour on the whole nation.
He uses all the personal confidence God had in him on behalf of the people. That is the point of it all. He will not give up his love and desire for Israel. God may treat them as the people of Moses, and say, "They are the people you have brought up: they are your people." "Oh no," says Moses, "they are Yours; and You are their only hope." Nothing puts him off.
Notice the shift inside the verse: God's presence with me, but do not bring us up. Moses will not be carried alone.
This comforted and emboldened his heart, and he replied, "If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here." (v. 15.) Now he identifies himself with the people. This intense love of Moses for Israel is no small picture of the heart of Christ. He links them with himself in his place of favour before God.
God named Israel's stubbornness as the reason He would not go with them. Grace turns that same fact into the reason He must.
Grace had come in during the interval; God's goodness had passed before him. This changed everything. Because the people were so stiff-necked, Moses says, we cannot do without God. So once grace is the foundation, Moses takes the very condition of the people and makes it his argument. That condition would have led God to consume them, or at least to keep Him from going among them. Now it is the reason for God to go up among them. The moment grace comes in, we feel that our very sinfulness is a reason why we cannot do without the presence of God.
Moses asks how anyone could tell that Israel stood in God's favour.
He claims, as it were, as proof of divine favour — of restored favour — God's own presence with His people. Nothing else could make it known. His presence would separate them from all other people. It is the same in principle today. The presence of the Holy Spirit on earth, building His people into a dwelling place for God, separates them from everything else.
Years later Moses faced a rebellious crowd. His first prayer proved to be the right one.
Who but the God of all grace could meet the ten thousand needs of wilderness life? Moses had said well, at the very beginning, "If Your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here." He was right and wise to put it that way. God's presence was the only answer to the demand of such a congregation. But that presence was an all-sufficient answer. God's treasury never runs out. He can never fail a trusting heart.
- Ruin — the calf was still in the camp when Moses came closest to God. Failure did not close the door; grace opened it wider.
- Boldness — grace received makes Moses bold. He presses God's own promise back on Him.
- Us — he refuses a blessing that stops with himself, and turns "your people" back into "Your people."
- Stiff-necked — God's reason for staying away becomes Moses' reason why He must come. Our weakness argues for His presence, not against it.
- Proof — nothing else marks a people as His, and nothing else carries them through the desert.
And how shall it be known then that I have found grace in thine eyes -- I and thy people? [Is it] not by thy going with us? so shall we be distinguished, I and thy people, from every people that is on the face of the earth.
After the golden calf, God said He would not go up among Israel, because they were a stiff-necked people. Moses will not accept that, and in this verse he asks what would prove God's favour and mark Israel off from every nation on earth.
God had just promised, "My presence will go with you," speaking to Moses alone. Moses will not keep that promise to himself. He asks it for the whole nation too.
He uses all the personal confidence that God had in him on behalf of the people. That is the bearing of it all... "Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight... consider that this nation is Yours." He will not give up his love and desire for Israel. God may treat them as the people of Moses, and say, "They are the people you have brought up: they are your people." "Oh no," says Moses, "they are Yours; and You are their only hope."
After the calf, God had spoken of Israel as Moses' people. In this verse Moses hands them back to God. He asks for God's presence as the one proof that favour has returned.
Now he identifies himself with the people... And not only so, but, rising higher, he now links them again with God. We have remarked that God took Israel on their own ground. Since they had rejected Him, He had said to Moses, "your" people. But now — now that Moses, acting as mediator, has gained the ear of God, he says again "Your" people... So he claims, in effect, as proof of divine favour — restoration of favour — God's own presence with His people. There was no other way to know it.
God had named Israel's stiff neck as His reason for staying away. Then God showed His goodness. Moses turns that same fact around and makes it his reason for asking God to come.
God had first threatened to consume them by coming up among them in a moment. Then He said, "I will not go up among you, for you are a stiff-necked people." Yet Moses says in chapter 34:9, "If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go up among us, for it is a stiff-necked people." In between, grace had come in; God's goodness had passed before him. This changed all... The moment grace comes in, even in the way God governs us, we feel this: our very sinfulness is a reason why we cannot do without the presence of God.
One thing marks Israel out from every other nation: God travels with them.
To be God's people meant that they had to dwell alone. He lived among them and went with them. That was the principle and the cause of their being separated from all people on the face of the earth (Exodus 33:16). It is ever so. There is the broad road of the world, and the narrow and separated path which leads to life. We cannot walk in the two at once.
Israel never earned this distinctness — they had just worshipped a calf. God marks them off from His own side, and that stays true even when His people fail to live up to it.
The people dwell alone. They are separate from others, because God has marked them off. They are not counted among the nations... That they are not counted among the nations comes from God's side. It is His grace and His gift. The people might not be true to their calling; nor were they: the Church of God has not been true to hers. This does not lessen the value of the truth.
God says yes in the next verse, and He names His reason: the favour of the man who asked.
The Lord makes it clear that His reason for a favourable answer is that Moses had found grace in God's sight, just as is true above all of the Lord Jesus. He has above all found grace in God's sight, and God knows Him by name.
- Presence asked. Moses will not take a promise or a land if God Himself will not go. He turns his own place of favour into a plea for the whole people.
- Presence as proof. Nothing else could show that God had restored His favour. His going with them is the one visible proof.
- Presence given. God Himself marks His people off from the nations. It is His gift, not a standard they reached.
- Presence despite failure. Once grace comes in, the same stubbornness that kept God at a distance becomes the reason they cannot do without Him.
- Presence secured. God says yes because the mediator had found grace in His sight. Writers see the same above all in Christ.
And Jehovah said to Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast said; for thou hast found grace in mine eyes, and I know thee by name.
Israel had made the golden calf, and God refused to go up with them. Moses pleaded on the ground of two things God had already told him: God knew him by name, and he had found favour. Verse 17 is God's yes — and the reason given for it is not Israel's improvement but the standing of the man who prayed.
Moses had asked God not to send someone else in His place, but to go Himself with the whole nation. God's reply gives him what he asked, and states the ground for it. Where the ESV says "favor," older translations say "grace" — the writers quoted here use "grace."
The Lord answered: "I will do this thing also that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight." Again He repeated the personal assurance: "And I know you by name." And so, because of the personal worth and faith of the mediator, the Lord Himself would once more go with Israel. The cloud of the divine presence would again be over them.
These words describe a closeness God had already granted. That closeness shaped how Moses came to Him, and how he prayed for others.
In complete nearness to God, he exchanged words and thoughts with the Infinite. With great human dignity, with holy freedom, yet always with the deepest reverence, he came to the Lord. In everything he said he carried Israel in his heart. God accepted him into an unusually close relationship with Himself — "I know you by name"; and God received his intercession — he found grace in God's sight.
God does not point to anything the people had earned. One writer looks past Moses to the One he pictures.
Above all, the reason for this is that we might see a picture of the grace of the intercession of the Lord Jesus for those redeemed by His blood, though they are overcome by the folly of disobedience, as we too often are... Moses is given the answer to his persistent prayer, "I will also do this thing that you have spoken" (v. 17). Yet the Lord makes it clear why He answered favourably: Moses had found grace in God's sight. The same is chiefly true of the Lord Jesus. He above all has found grace in God's sight, and God knows Him by name.
Moses could have kept this standing for himself. Instead he spends it on the guilty.
What can be more lovely, more like Christ, than this? He uses all the personal confidence God had in him on behalf of the people. That is the point of it all... He will not give up his love and longing for Israel. God may treat them as the people of Moses. He may say, "They are the people you brought up; they are your people." "Oh no," says Moses, "they are Yours; and You are their only hope." He will not be put off.
The same fact about Israel works two ways. Under justice it would mean their destruction; with a mediator and grace, it becomes their reason for asking Him to come.
Moses asks for the accompanying presence of the Lord as proof that they had found grace in His sight. If it were only a question of justice, His coming among them could only destroy them, because they were "a stiff-necked people." But as soon as He speaks of grace, in connection with the mediator, that same stiff-neckedness becomes a plea for demanding His presence.
One writer turns the same reasoning on himself:
That is exactly what we have to do. Why must I insist on having God with me? Because unless I have Him with me in His grace, I will never get through the wilderness with this terrible flesh still in me. I give as my reason: I am so bad. And through grace He can have me with Him, despite all my weaknesses.
Answered prayer did not settle Moses. What he received made him ask for more.
So the mediation of Moses was a complete success — complete for the restoration of the people. They are once again the Lord's people, to be put under a new covenant, as the next chapter shows: a covenant of law indeed, but law mixed with grace, in keeping with the character of God as now revealed. The effect of the divine favour on Moses is remarkable. Every fresh display of grace only stirs up larger desires; and so Moses now longs for himself that he may see God's glory.
- Ground — God's yes rests on grace found in His sight, never on the people's record.
- Gift — "I know you by name" is a closeness God had already granted. Moses prays from it.
- Reach — one man spends his favour on the many. Moses keeps calling them God's people, not his own.
- Reversal — through the mediator, their stubbornness becomes the very reason to plead for His presence.
- Result — the restoration is complete, and grace received enlarges desire: Moses asks next to see God's glory.