Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
As a Man Speaks to His Friend
Exodus 33:1-11
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people that you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ · WEB
God offers the land without himself, the nation mourns, and the tent of meeting is pitched outside the camp.
Go to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way Exodus 33:3.
The offer is everything that was promised except the one thing the promise was for. They may have the land, the conquest, an angel to lead them, and the milk and honey; what is withdrawn is his own presence, and the reason given is mercy rather than rejection — proximity would destroy them.
It is the exact arrangement most people would settle for, and the narrative records that Israel did not. When the people heard this evil news, they mourned; and no one put on his jewelry Exodus 33:4. They call the offer of unaccompanied blessing bad news. Whatever else the calf revealed about them, this reaction is the first evidence in the chapter that something in them was genuine.
The jewelry is stripped off and stays off from Mount Horeb onward Exodus 33:6. It was gold of exactly this kind, taken from Egypt, that had gone into the calf. The mourning takes a practical form: they remove what they had misused.
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it "The Tent of Meeting." Everyone who sought Yahweh went out to the Tent of Meeting, which was outside the camp Exodus 33:7.
This is not the tabernacle, which has not been built. It is a provisional arrangement, and its location is the point: meeting God now requires leaving the camp and walking out to where he is, in full view of everyone. Seeking him has become a public act with a distance attached to it.
When Moses went out to the Tent, all the people rose up, and stood, everyone at their tent door, and watched Moses, until he had gone into the Tent Exodus 33:8.
A nation standing in its doorways watching one man walk out to meet God. Then the cloud comes down at the entrance, and all the people rose up and worshiped, everyone at their tent door Exodus 33:10. They worship from where they are, at a distance, because that is as near as they can get. The scene is reverent and it is a diminishment, and both things are true at once.
Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend Exodus 33:11.
The phrase describes the manner of the conversation rather than a literal sight, as the same chapter makes clear twelve verses later Exodus 33:20. What it asserts is directness — no dream, no riddle, no intermediary. And in a chapter about a presence being withdrawn from a nation, one man is talking to God the way friends talk.
His servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, didn't depart from the Tent Exodus 33:11. Moses returns to the camp; the young man stays behind. It is the second quiet notice of Joshua in the book, and both times he is found where the presence is.
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