Exodus 33:12-23 Commentary

Go Between

The first 11 verses of chapter 33 spell out the way Moses was called by God to operate among the people. At first God indicates that Moses will need to lead the people on his own. It’s almost as if God doesn’t trust that He will be able to keep loving these hard-hearted, stiff-necked people and it’s only a matter of time before God is threatening destruction all over again.  Hearing this, God’s people repent and they all journey on together: Israel, God, and Moses running interference (or, anyway, that’s sure how it seems.) 

After this, things settle into a routine. Moses sets up a tent outside the camp. This is called the meeting tent and people come out to have Moses adjudicate their disputes. Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud, signifying God’s presence, would settle above the tent. One imagines this operated kind of like a “come on in, we’re open!” sign on a business. Folks would come for advice. They would speak to Moses at the tent entrance and then Moses would retreat into the tent and emerge later with an answer.  The author of Exodus explains it like this: “in this way, the LORD used to speak to Moses face-to-face, like two people talking to each other.”  This, of course, raises some interpretive issues given what we’re about to get into in today’s Lectionary reading.  Suffice it to say, Robert Alter observes, “The hyperbole is in all likelihood a continuation of the visual perspective of the people so clearly marked in verses 8-10: as it appears to the Israelites from their vantage point in front of their tents, Moses conversing with the pillar of cloud is speaking to God as a man speaks to his fellow.” 

Even as he is given this position of leadership and authority by God and, it seems, is increasingly trusted in his role by the people, Moses feels the tension inherent as a go-between.

Clergy Burn-out

In verse 12, God’s recent statement that the people must go out ahead on Moses’ authority seems to still be bothering Moses.  He needs reassurance that God will keep leading the people, even if God intends to do so through a messenger. The CEB Study Bible suggests that, in this passage, “Moses enters into an extended negotiation with the Lord about how the Lord will be present with the Israelites as they continue their journey.”

More than logistics and details, Moses is pressing God, in this exchange, because “Moses wants most of all to know the Lord and the Lord’s ways.” Beyond this, “Moses asks to know something deeper and more profound about the Lord’s way, that is the Lord’s character, names and ways of dealing with human sin and disobedience.” (CEB Study Bible) Additionally, Robert Alter points to the verb “to know” that is central to these verses because of “Moses’s urgent need to know both the nature of the guidance God will provide Israel through the wilderness and God’s intrinsic nature.” 

At the heart of Moses’ request is a desire to be renewed in trust of the Lord. Moses seems confused by God’s answer and reiterates that “it is only through God’s presence among the Israelites as they journey onward that his own favored status before God can be confirmed and the election of Israel as well.” Ministers might well understand the feeling that everything rises and falls on God’s will and favor as well as the uncertainty of our limited human capacity to grasp the ways of God.  In response to Moses’s searching, God relents to continue accompanying the people.

Pastor’s Retreat

The final request in this sequence – active ministry, to caution and confusion – is to see God’s glory. Consider Moses’s first encounter with the Living God, timidly approaching the burning bush and attempting to deflect God’s call until now.  Here Moses demands the assurance he needs, he “is now ready and eager to be granted a full-scale epiphany,” according to Alter. Similarly, according to the CEB Study Bible, “All of these descriptions set up the expectation that Moses is about to receive a unique experience of knowing God’s deeper character, name and presence.”  From bewilderment at God’s name in Exodus 3 – “I am who I am” – until now Moses is attempting to discern the deeper character and way of God.  At this pivotal moment in his ministry, “Moses learns of the foundational kindness and compassion undergirding the divine name and character.” 

The Hebrew word for glory has the most direct translation as “weightiness” and God’s response to Moses is that there is no way Moses could lift this weight. It would crush him.  But God relents inasmuch as God shows Moses the goodness of God, because, Alter explains, “God’s intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps also intolerable, to the finite mind of man, but that something of His attributes—His ’goodness,’ the directional pitch of His ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of His presence–can be glimpsed by humankind.”

Alongside the weight of God’s glory is also God’s promise to be a shield, to protect Moses at the moment of revelation. Instead of the ordinary word for hand, typically the backside of the hand, the word here indicates something more tender, like the palm.  This word for hand may have been chosen for its linguistic similarity to the word for “wing” or “shield,” reinforcing again God’s protection, even from God’s own glory, power and strength. 

Illustration

Whether you have the opportunity to show a clip in your service or just to watch it as part of your own preaching preparation, a new documentary-style sitcom (think Parks & Recreation, The Office, etc.) called The Promised Land follows the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.  While not Biblically accurate, it does facilitate an opportunity to imagine the frustrations of Moses, especially, trying to adjudicate life on behalf of Israel. The trailer for the first season, for example, shows him in the position of advice-giving, refereeing between conflicting members of Israel and the very real uncertainty and frustration of Exodus 33 is suddenly less difficult to imagine.