Moses has still one more request to make—the lastand perhaps the greatest: “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.” Moses had seen the pillar of cloud and of fire; more than this, he had been on Mt. Sinai where the August Presence was so grand and awful that he said—“I do exceedingly fear and quake;” and just at this time we are told that the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the very door of Moses’ tent, and the Lord talked with Moses, speaking unto him face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend (Ex. 33: 9, 11). But this last request asks for something yet more deep and spiritual. These recent developments have made on the mind of Moses a painful impression that after all he does not yet know God fully—does not really understand him; and therefore needs to know him more thoroughly. Where is the line between his mercy and his wrath? How much can he bear in his covenant people, and at what point will his mercy surely turn to consuming judgment? When and on what grounds will he forgive his sinning people and blot out their iniquities?——These are the points in the character of God which he feels that he must know, and which he expresses under the one most comprehensive word—“thy glory.” They belong to the depths of the divine nature.

This inquisitive spirit is prompted by one supreme desire in the heart of Moses, viz. to do faithfully and well the work to which God has called him, and to learn how to bear himself toward God under these responsibilities. Therefore the Lord yields here also, the request being not only reasonable but pleasing to him; for, does not the Lord always delight to meet those who long to see more of his glory, especially when the deepest aim and purpose of this longing culminate in the passion to do the Lord’s work more perfectly?——Noticeably, the Lord’s answer chooses a new word. He does not say—Yes, my servant Moses, I will show thee my “glory”; but this: “I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee.”——This is not by any means an evasion of the main question, for the Lord comes squarely up to the very point that labors in the mind of his servant Moses—the mutual relations in the character and ways of God between his mercies and his justice; his compassion toward his children, and his fearfulseverity to the guilty whom no mercy can hold to obedience; whom nothing can move but terrific judgments.——It can scarcely be necessary to explain the usage of the word “name” as spoken of God: “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee.” We have become familiar with the fact that in the Scriptures, the name (usually) does more than merely distinguish one individual from another (as in our common parlance), being significant of nature, of character, of some predominant quality. It is not that God may be called the Lord, the Lord God, but that he is the Lord, i. e. the real Jehovah—forever the same, and forever faithful to his promises. To proclaim his name therefore is to proclaim his nature; to testify to his real character.

The manner and circumstances of this proclamation in the case before us are altogether unique and striking. The ground idea is that, in human relationships, we learn the character by seeing the man. We depend on the eye and the sense of sight above the testimony of any other sense, and we expect to see the character in the face. To “see the face” is, therefore, the most complete and satisfactory means of learning the character—of knowing the man—that we can have under the limitations of our present mortal state. The language and the whole transaction before us rest on these simple facts of our present life.——The Lord said to Moses: “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live.” To see the very face of God would imply a more full revelation of his ineffable glory than mortal man could bear. A softened manifestation of those unutterable glories is all, therefore, that can be granted even to the man of God, Moses; and this is expressively put by saying: “Thou shalt see my back parts; my face shall not be seen.” This was the Lord’s proposal: “Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock; and it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: then I will take away my hand and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen” (Ex. 33: 21–23).

It will be noted that in this narrative Moses makes no attempt to describe the scenes of this visible manifestation, or the impressions it made on his mind.Words are too weak for such a service. Those glorious views of God which sight may give, and which we may assume that Moses obtained in this proposed manifestation, each one must have for himself alone and not for another. They will come to all the Lord’s true children in the day when they shall see even as they are seen and know as they are known.——The matters which Moses does record at this point are, that the Lord bade him prepare two other stone tablets to replace the broken and to appear with them the next morning on the top of the mount; that he must come alone and let no other man be seen in all the mount, nor let any animal of the flock or herd feed before the mount; that then the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The words of this proclamation are recorded:—“The Lord [the Jehovah], Jehovah God, merciful and gracious; long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands; forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon children’s children unto the third and to the fourth generation.”——Profoundly awed by these words and by this impressive manifestation; encouraged by the prominence given in it to the ideas of mercy and loving-kindness, Moses made haste, and bowed his head to the earth and worshiped, and then lifted up his prayer—“If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us (for it is a stiff-necked people) and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for thine inheritance.”——The same points are prominent here as before (Ex. 32: 11–13)—that God would forgive the great sin of the people; that he would go among them again, and dwell in the midst of them; and that he would truly take and hold them as his own inheritance. Upon all these points the heart of Moses is intently set, and he brings them before God every time. The Lord responds—I renew my covenant; I shall go on to work marvelously among this people. The revelations of my great name before them and before all the world by means of them, are only begun. I will go before this people to drive out the Canaanite; but this one thing I must insist upon: My people must wash out every stain of idol-worship;they must destroy all idol-altars, break down their images, cut down their groves, have no associations with corrupt idol-worshipers; worship no other than the one true and holy God, for the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. Other requirements follow as may be seen (Ex. 34); Moses fills out another forty days on the mount; the law is again written on two tablets like the former; Moses comes down with his face (unconsciously to himself) shining as if the reflection of the more shining face of God still lingered upon it. When Aaron and all Israel saw this, they feared to come near him. Moses called to them (i. e. to come); Aaron and the rulers (not the people) came and Moses talked with them. Afterward all the people drew near and Moses rehearsed the recently revealed commandments of the Lord, putting a vail on his face while speaking with the people. This glory on his face was the sensible witness that he had been in very deed talking with the all-glorious God, and that it behooved them to accept him as God’s authorized messenger.

In tracing thus rapidly the general course of thought in these chapters (Ex. 32–34), I have aimed to bring out the salient points and the spirit of the transactions. Some things have been passed which it were well to return and examine more fully.

This first great apostacy into idol-worship was doubtless born of their Egyptian life. There they had seen the ox, the cow, and the calf made objects of worship. It is supposable that the leaders in this movement were of that “mixed multitude” who came out from Egypt with them (Ex. 12: 38), and who seem to have led off in the lusting and murmuring at Taberah (Num. 11: 4). Neither of these facts—their having seen such worship in Egypt, nor their being seduced by the Egyptians among them—can at all excuse their sin. It admits of no excuse.——Moses recites the main points of this case again (Deut. 9: 8–21), omitting the special manifestation of God’s name, but giving prominence to his own anxiety, not to say agony, on their behalf lest the Lord should indeed destroy them. “I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink waterbecause of all your sin which ye had sinned in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger (for I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure wherewith the Lord was wroth with you to destroy you)”. He also speaks of his prayer for Aaron whose sin in this matter had been great (v. 20).——How much this great apostacy impressed itself upon the nation’s history and affected good men in after ages, may be seen in Ps. 106: 19–23, and Acts 7: 39–43, and 1 Cor. 10: 7.

The fact that Moses burnt and pulverized the golden calf so that he might compel the people to drink it, shows him to have been profoundly skilled in the science of metallurgy. He has not told us what solvent he used, other than fire, for it was no part of his object to teach this art or to exhibit his skill therein. Few men have ever lived in any age who could have done it.

The social and moral influence of this festival for idol-worship is expressively put by Moses: “The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” As the subsequent narrative shows, here was revelry—dancing, shouting, and song. God was forgotten; all true sense of his presence and indeed of his nature was ruled out by the very fact that they had exalted a golden calf into his place. By a law of human nature men become like the object they worship. Calf-worshipers go down to the level of the calf they worship. Alas! would that they did not sink far lower in passion and in crime!

In Ex. 32: 25 we read: “When Moses saw that the people were naked—​(for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies), then he took his stand in the gate of the camp and said, Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me.”——Modern critics for the most part give the Hebrew words the sense, not of being naked, but of being cast loose, demoralized, put into the state of being lawless, without restraint. The principal verb occurs rarely; it may of itself bear either sense above indicated. The sense “naked” does not well suit the context; for in what sense did Aaron make them naked? And how could their nakedness be a reason why Moses should send armed men among them to slay three thousand?——The other sense, therefore,should be preferred. Aaron had utterly demoralized them. They were powerless, and only objects of scorn before their enemies. God had in wrath forsaken them.