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Israel Worships a Golden Calf
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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 that You go with us?”
And the Lord said, “I will also do this thing that you have spoken;
for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name.” The
prophet still did not stop pleading. He now made a request that no
human being had ever made before: “Please, show me Your glory.”
Moses Sees God’s Glory
The gracious words were spoken, “I will make all My goodness
pass before you.” Moses was called to the mountain summit; then
the hand that made the world, that hand that “removes the mountains,
and they do not know” (
Job 9:5
), took this creature of the dust and
placed him in a cleft of the rock, while the glory of God and all His
goodness passed before him.
To Moses, this experience was an assurance that was worth in-
finitely more to him than all the learning of Egypt or all his achieve-
ments as a statesman or military leader. No earthly power or skill of
learning can substitute for God’s abiding presence.
Moses stood alone in the presence of the Eternal One, and he
was not afraid, for his soul was in harmony with his Maker. “If I
regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (
Psalm 66:18
).
But “the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He will
show them His covenant” (
Psalm 25:14
).
The Deity proclaimed Himself, “The Lord, the Lord God, merci-
ful 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.”
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“Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and
worshiped.” The Lord graciously promised to renew His favor to
Israel and to do marvels such as had not been done “in all the earth,
nor in any nation.” During all this time, as at the first, Moses was
miraculously sustained. At God’s command he had prepared two
tablets of stone and had taken them with him to the summit; and
again the Lord “wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the
Ten Commandments.” (See Appendix, Note 4.)