Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

My first thought when I read this passage was to wonder if, perhaps, over the years the order of some of this got changed during copying over the years.  However, that brought me to my current thoughts on it: God is all-powerful, therefore the order which we find this in today is the order in which He desires us to read it (or, as likely, reading them in the order which would not make us think they were out of order would not reveal anything about God’s Truth which reading them in this order does not, whether or not they were originally written in that order).  There may be those who read something about our relationship with God from the order these passages are in, but changing the order to the way my brain wants to say was how it was originally written does not currently change anything in my understanding of this passage.

In any case, I will write about what this passage says to me as we have it.  So, when Moses returned to the mountain after restoring order in the camp, God told him to leave the area around Mt. Sinai and lead the people to the Promised Land.  But that He would not go with them, otherwise He might destroy them along the way.  When the Israelites heard these words and were distressed.  As a result, they began removing their ornamentation even before they heard Moses tell them that God had told them to remove their ornamentation.  Then, a little later, Moses asks God who He will send with them when they go.  God tells Moses that His Presence will go with them, and Moses replies that if God’s Presence does not go with them He should not send them out from Mt. Sinai.  Moses then asks God how people will know that He is pleased with Him, if He does not go with them? And, what will distinguish Moses and God’s people from everyone else if God is not with them?

And now I finally get to the meat of what I want to write about this passage.  For me today the heart of this passage comes when Moses says to God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. ”  I seek, and I hope that you seek, to please God so that He will continue to teach me His ways, to teach me how I may please Him more.  However, I also seek to please God so that He will be with me wherever He may send me.  What distinguishes me from others is God’s presence with me.  If God is not with me, I am no different than anyone else.  We are only God’s people inasmuch as God is with us, and anyone can be part of God’s people by seeking to be in His Presence.  I am not better than anyone else because what makes me distinct is God’s Presence.  Therefore what distinguishes me from others is not to my credit.  Rather credit for however I am distinct from others goes to God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

After the incident with the golden calf, God suggests to the Israelites that, while He will send an angel in front of them to guide them, He may not accompany them on their journey to the Promised Land.  The Israelites beg Him to remain with them and stopped wearing any sort of ornaments (as God commanded them to do while He decided what to do with them).  Then Moses spoke with God and requested that He go with them (I am unclear if the order these things are recorded in is the order in which they happened).  Then we come to what today stands out to me.  God tells Moses,

I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.

Let us claim that message for ourselves.  God knows us by name.  Think about what the means.  It is an even bigger deal than if the President of the United States, or Bill Gates, or Donald Trump, or whatever big name celebrity you might choose to name, called out you out by name when giving a speech to a large crowd.  Out of the approximately nine billion people on this planet today, you are important enough to God that He knows your name (and not only does He know your name, but the one that only those closest to you use).  But there is more to this message than that.  If we throw ourselves on His mercy so that He might be please with us, He will do everything that we ask.

Side Note: when I started this I was going to also comment on God hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock, but after writing this I think this is the place to stop.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

I think it was last year that I first noticed that Moses started setting up a “tent of meeting” before he had the Israelites construct the Tabernacle (which then took over that function).   However, I had not noticed until today that this passage implies that anyone could go there to inquire of God, even when Moses was not there.  I am not entirely sure about how that connects with the fact that Joshua never left the pre-Tabernacle tent of meeting.  Did Joshua listen to those who came to inquire of God and perhaps help them determine God’s will?  Or, perhaps relay their requests to Moses?  In addition to that, we have Moses doing more interceding with God for the Israelites.  God told the Israelites that He would not travel with them as they made their way to the Promised Land because He might destroy them as a result of their stiff-necked ways.  In response, the Israelites stopped wearing any ornaments to show their contrition.  I am really not sure where I am going with this. I have been working on it off and on all day trying to put the sentences together which convey what this passage, in conjunction with yesterday’s, is saying to me.  Before asking God to accompany the Israelites in their travel, Moses said that God had told him “I know you by name and you have found favor with me.”  Then, after Moses asks God to accompany the Israelites, God said, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”  But I want to go back to the rest of what Moses said when he quoted God.  Moses said, “ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.”  I think a reason that the time sequence for several things in this passage, where the passage seems to say that people did things before God told them to and then that they did them because God told them to is to communicate the complicated message in that exchange between God and Moses.  God was pleased with Moses because Moses asked Him to teach him His ways, and Moses asked God to teach him His ways because God was pleased with him.  Even there I cannot quite make it come out right.  If we wish evidence that God is pleased with us, let us seek for Him to teach us His ways so that we may know Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

We generally use the terms “Tent of Meeting” and “Tabernacle” interchangeably.  Yet, in this passage, the Tent of Meeting is described as existing before the Tabernacle was built.  However, we also know that later the Tabernacle was often referred to as the Tent of Meeting.  To the best of my knowledge it is never made clear when the Tabernacle replaced the tent which Moses initially used as the Tent of Meeting.  The change may have taken place as soon as the Tabernacle was consecrated, but I suspect that it happened after Moses began delegating the bulk of the task of judging disputes to others.

Whenever Moses spoke with God it caused his face to become radiant for some time period afterwards.  In fact, the radiance caused the people to be afraid to come near him.  As a result, Moses wore a veil over his face except when he went in to speak with God and while he was telling the people what God had told him.  I see a lesson here which I am striving to figure out how to express.  When we discuss what we perceive to be God’s message to people, we should do so face to face, with no disguises and nothing hidden.  However, when we find ourselves among those whose lifestyles we disapprove, we should not be constantly expressing our disapproval.  I really wish I could express that better.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 33-35.

In this passage it refers to Moses going out to the Tent of Meeting then a little later mentions Moses telling people to bring offerings for building the Tabernacle.  Yet later in the Bible the Tabernacle is referred to as the Tent of Meeting.  So, what does this mean?  Well, the Tabernacle was overseen by the priests, but this Tent of Meeting appears to have been Moses’ special province.  My reading suggests that the Tent of Meeting referred to here was a tent which Moses set up outside the camp to go to to speak with God.  Later, the Tabernacle took over that purpose, once it was completed.  Now I find it interesting that Moses went back and forth from the Tent of Meeting and the camp, but Joshua appears to have lived there.   It appears to me that Joshua spending all of his time in the Tent of Meeting served two purposes.  First, since the Tent of Meeting was outside the camp someone needed to be there to take care of the tent and ensure that it was secured against weather.  That was Joshua’s job.  Second, and more important, Joshua was training to become Moses’ successor.  He needed to spend time there studying and learning to do God’s will.  By maintaining a separation from the rest of the camp, Joshua was able to develop his skills without the distractions of the camp.