Moses—Love in Limbo

 

When our last episode, Moses—The Broken Vows (Exodus 32), came to a close, it did so on a very sad note. That’s because the relationship between God and His new Bride, Israel, remained in a state of limbo following her unfaithfulness to her Husband during what should have been their “honeymoon.” Although Israel’s adultery was deserving of death, she was spared that fate as a direct result of Moses’ intercession on her behalf.

When we last saw her, though, God still hadn’t forgiven her, and He was refusing to go with her on her journey to the Promised Land—offering, instead, to send His Angel to guide her to her new home there. So, in this episode (from Exodus 33-34), we will find Israel in a “make or break” moment in her relationship with God, and find Moses doing everything he can to obtain forgiveness for her and to convince God not to leave her on her own.

 

Episode #12 of Act 1, Scene 3 of God’s One Big Story
Cast:     Narrator     God     Moses     Aaron   Joshua   The People

Setting the Scene: with God and Israel’s relationship still hanging in the balance, if falls to Moses to once again “stand in the gap”[1] before God and plead for Israel’s forgiveness and restoration. In the course of doing that, he will be given an overwhelming revelation of God’s Goodness…

Chapter 33

Narrator: Then the LORD said to Moses…

God: Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Narrator: And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the LORD had said to Moses…

God: Say to the children of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you. Now therefore, take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do to you.’  

Narrator: So the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by Mount Horeb.

(Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the LORD went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp. So it was, whenever Moses went out to the tabernacle, that all the people rose, and each man stood at his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the tabernacle.

And it came to pass, when Moses entered the tabernacle, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses. All the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose and worshiped, each man in his tent door. So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. And he would return to the camp, but his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.)

 

 

Narrator: Then Moses said to the LORD…

Moses: 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 grace in My sight.’ Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.

Narrator: And God said…

God: My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.

Moses: If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.

God: I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.

Moses: Please, show me Your glory.

God: I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you…

I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But you cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.

Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.

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Chapter 34

Narrator: And the LORD said to Moses…

God: Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on these tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke. So be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself to Me there on the top of the mountain. And no man shall come up with you, and let no man be seen throughout all the mountain; let neither flocks nor herds feed before that mountain.

Narrator: So he cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. Then Moses rose early in the morning and went up Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him; and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone. Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed…

God: The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

Narrator: So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. Then he said…

Moses: If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.

The Covenant Renewed

God: Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. 

Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.

The Terms of the Covenant

• • You shall make no molded gods for yourselves.
  • The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.
  • All that open the womb are Mine, and every male firstborn among your livestock, whether ox or sheep. But the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb. And if you will not redeem him, then you shall break his neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.
  • And none shall appear before Me empty-handed.
  • Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest.
  • And you shall observe the Feast of Weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.
  • Three times in the year all your men shall appear before the Lord, the LORD God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times in the year.
  • You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning.
  • The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Narrator: Then the LORD said to Moses…

God: Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 

Narrator: So he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Now it was so, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the Testimony were in Moses’ hand when he came down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him.

So when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses talked with them. Afterward all the children of Israel came near, and he gave them as commandments all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.

And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with Him, he would take the veil off until he came out; and he would come out and speak to the children of Israel whatever he had been commanded. And whenever the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone, then Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with Him.

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Our Review

 

Because there is so much going on in this episode—and the timing of it is often so difficult to follow—here’s a little guide to help us better understand what’s taking place in this part of the story…

 

As we can see from this chart, when this episode opens, Moses is back up on the mountain with God where God instructs him to take the people, leave Mount Sinai, and head to the Promised Land. However, He declares that He will not be going with them but instead will send His Angel to guide them on their journey. (The Hebrew word used here for angel is malach, and refers to a messenger from God which could be either divine or human.)

Although He says He won’t be traveling with them, God reassures Moses that He will fulfill the promises He made to Abraham back in Genesis 15: 7, 13-14, 16 when He told him…

I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it…Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years…And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions…But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.[2]

This, then, is the opening statement in what will become Moses’ negotiations with God for the forgiveness and restoration of Israel.

Moses’ Negotiations with God

By definition, a…

…negotiation is a strategic discussion intended to resolve an issue in a way that both parties find acceptable.[3]

This is most often accomplished through a process involving…

• • Preparation: where, before the negotiations get underway, each side has a clear idea of their goals, and what they’re willing to give up in order to achieve those goals.
  • Exchanging of Information: where both sides present their positions and what they are bringing to the table. Each side should make clear what they want and listen to the other side in order to find a place where they can meet in the middle.
  • Bargaining: where, once both sides have been explained, the real back and forth can begin. It is important that each side listen to the other and not interrupt or become defensive. Give and take—and mutual respect—will be required by both parties.
  • Closing the Deal: where the negotiations are finalized when both sides are satisfied—most often with a written contract detailing the commitments made by each party, as well as the consequences should either side violate those commitments.^[4]

As part of the Preparation phase of these negotiations, sometime between the golden calf incident and Moses’ return to the top of the mountain, the LORD had told him to…

Say to the children of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you. Now therefore, take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do to you.’  

In other words, before God would agree to any negotiations, certain conditions had to be met—the people had to remove the ornaments they were wearing, ornaments which had come straight out of Egypt. This is extremely significant because…

Although Egyptians wore jewelry for cosmetic purposes, they also routinely decorated jewelry with images of gods and hieroglyphic religious texts meant to…ward off evil spirits and misfortune.

Egyptians even had jewelry with magical signs related to the realm of the dead; it was thought that the magic contained in the amulets could help them negotiate the dangers of the underworld.

This means that getting rid of the jewelry was not just a matter of personal vanity; it was primarily a matter of eliminating the paganism that literally clung to them.

Ancient peoples depended upon their amulets for their safety. Without them, they felt defenseless, believing that they and their families were open to attack from malicious spirits.

Therefore, going without their amulets would have been a real test of faith for the Israelites[5]–a test which would indicate if they had genuinely repented. Once that was done, Moses’ negotiations with God could proceed—and went along something like this…

 

 

After spending another forty days and forty nights in the presence of God, and after being shown as much of His Glory as one person could handle, Moses returned to the people glowing, because…

Moses’ communion with God left an imprint on him in the form of a radiant glow, a reflection of the glory of YHWH…what Moses experienced was the mercy of YHWH; that was the content of the revelation, and that was the significance of YHWH’s decision to renew the covenant with Israel rather to enforce His rights by either destroying Israel or abandoning them.

The glow on Moses’ face reflected YHWH’s compassion…His face glowed because he had been in close proximity to the glory that is the love, faithfulness, and saving righteousness of God. [6]

Although the people were terrified at the sight of Moses’ face, he called them together and gave them the good news that God had chosen to renew His covenant with them and that He would not abandon them after all. However, because the people were the ones who had broken the covenant, they would not be participating in another covenant-making ceremony, nor would they be called upon to make any vows of obedience. They would play no part in this renewal because the only reason it was happening at all was because of God’s graciousness and the grace that He had extended to Moses. In fact, if we go back and look at the interchange between God and Moses in Exodus 33:12-34:9, we will find grace and graciousness mentioned seven times.

Grace and forgiveness notwithstanding, the people were not about to get off “scot-free”—they would still be expected to abide by the Terms of the Covenant. These had not really changed at all, their order had merely been rearranged from that in the Book of the Covenant to emphasis the command that…

…You shall make no molded gods for yourselves. (Exodus 34:17)

Having delivered the Terms of the Covenant to the people, Moses then placed a veil over his face whenever he was not in the presence of God or when he was relating God’s commands to the people.

 

 

The Tent of Meeting

As we learned in the little aside at Exodus 33:7-11, after the people’s sin with the golden calf, Moses set up his tent outside the camp so that he could meet with God there. This was necessary because as long as the people were unrepentant and unforgiven, God could not dwell among them. Moses called this the tabernacle of meeting but to distinguish it from the Tabernacle that was yet to be built, we will refer to it as the tent of meeting. Unlike the Tabernacle to come, the tent of meeting had no altar and no sacrifices were offered there. Instead, it was the place where the pillar of cloud would descend when Moses was in attendance, where God would talk to him as friend to friend, and where anyone who needed a word from the Lord could come—and it would remain in use until the formal Tabernacle was completed.

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In Summary

This episode marked a pivotal chapter in Israel’s history as a nation. Because of her unfaithfulness to God and her violation of their marriage covenant, Israel’s future as the Wife of God was left hanging in the balance—a future which was only salvaged through the humble intercession of their unappreciated and often maligned leader, Moses.

Although we may tend to dismiss our prayers as being insignificant in the overall scheme of things, especially when they seemingly go “unanswered,” in reality, they do make a difference and can even have a powerful impact on the generations to come—as evidenced in this instance, when the fate of an entire nation, and even the future of God’s redemption plan for the world, hinged on the persistent prayers of this one faithful servant of God.

Moses’ example should be a reminder to us that we are to pray fervently and faithfully at all times and in every situation of life. Or, as the Apostle James said in James 5:13-18…

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit…

…always keeping in mind that…

• • God wants to forgive and restore His People; and,
  • God hears and responds to the prayers of His People.

And as Moses found out on the mountain, He does this because…

The LORD, the LORD God, [is] merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation. (Exodus 34:6-7)

Now that Israel has been forgiven and restored to the Lord, the story’s progress which was interrupted by the golden calf fiasco in Exodus 32 will now be resumed. So, in our next episode, we will join Moses and the Israelites as they make joyful preparations for the construction of the all-important Tabernacle of Meeting!

 

 

 

 

 

Original featured image and covenant renewal image courtesy of https://www.freebibleimages.org/.
Original tent of meeting image courtesy of https://pixabay.com/illustrations/search/moses/?pagi=2.

[1] Ezekiel 22:30.

[2] While many have questioned the righteousness of God’s actions in wiping out the Canaanites, criticizing Him for His seeming lack of grace and mercy toward the peoples living there, He explains in the verse above and the ones below that they were removed because of their wickedness. Later, as the next generation is preparing to finally enter the land, He admonishes them…

Do not think in your heart, after the LORD your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness the LORD has brought me in to possess this land’; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out from before you. It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people. (Deuteronomy 9:4-6)]

[3] Rajeev Dhir, “Understanding Negotiation: Key Stages and Effective Strategies,” updated April 20, 2026, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/negotiation.asp

[4] Dhir.

[5] Duane A. Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publishers, 2014), pp. 642-643.

[6] Garrett, pp. 664-665.