Exodus 32:13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’ ”
Today’s verses are troubling to me. It sounds like God decided to destroy the Israelites because of their idolatry and Moses talked Him out of it. The God of all creation, sovereign ruler of all the universe does not need Moses (or anyone) to talk Him out of (or into) anything, so what gives?
Exodus 32:14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
If God’s words are not for His benefit, then they must be for Moses’s benefit, right? Moses working through God’s “threat” and urging mercy changes Moses’s heart for the Israelites, right? But what if Moses had said, “You know what, God? You’re right. Wipe them all out. Make me a great nation instead”? Did God know Moses’s heart so well that He knew that would not happen? Does God work through this kind of manipulation?
Exodus 32:15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.
Precious Savior, You are sovereign, merciful, compassionate, loving. Gone is the angry God of the Old Testament, whose way was anger and destruction, wiping out everything and starting over. I also don’t think You are manipulative, so help me as I read and study Your word to make sense of these passages I don’t understand. Draw me closer. Amen.
Exodus 32:16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
Have a blessed day.