Scripture Daily

Context No. 2417 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 33:12-16: in context

12Moses said to the LORD, “Behold, you tell me, ‘Bring up this people;’ and you haven’t 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.’ 13Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your way, now, that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight; and consider that this nation is your people.” 14He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15Moses said to him, “If your presence doesn’t go with me, don’t carry us up from here. 16For how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn’t it that you go with us, so that we are separated, I and your people, from all the people who are on the surface of the earth?”

After the golden calf, Moses is bargaining with God over the journey ahead. God has told him to lead the people up to the land, but Moses is not satisfied with the destination or even with an angel escort. He presses in: if your presence does not go with me, do not carry us up from here. God answers, my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.

Moses will not trade the presence of God for anything, not the promised land itself. What good is arriving, he reasons, if God is not the one who goes with us? The very thing that would mark Israel out from every other people on earth is not their land or their success but that God himself travels among them. It is a startling refusal: offered the gift, Moses holds out for the Giver. He would rather stay put with God than go anywhere without him.

Would I rather reach the destination I want without God, or go nowhere at all unless his presence goes with me?

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