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Moses Intercedes for the People
v. 11. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke Me? as they were now doing with their insulting rejection, and how long will it be ere they believe Me, for all the signs which I have showed among them? They rejected God, they did not accept the evidences of His power and of His mercy; and His patience was at the point of being exhausted.
v. 12. I will smite them with the pestilence and disinherit them, cut them off from the promised inheritance by exterminating them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. Cf Exo_32:10. But Moses stepped into the breach as the mediator and the champion of the people.
v. 13. And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for Thou broughtest up this people in Thy might from among them,)
v. 14. and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. The Egyptians themselves had received unmistakable evidence of the fact that it was the one true, the almighty God, who had led His people forth from their country, from the house of bondage, and they had brought the report to the Canaanitish nations. For they, all the nations here concerned, have heard that Thou, Lord, art among this people, being in their very midst, that Thou, Lord, art seen face to face, appearing here in a visible manifestation, and that Thy cloud standeth over them, and that Thou goest before them, by daytime in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. The report concerning all these wonderful happenings had been carried into the entire surrounding country.
v. 15. Now if Thou shalt kill all this people as one man, as the Lord had just threatened to do, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,
v. 16. Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which He sware unto them, therefore He hath slain them in the wilderness. Cf Exo_32:11-13; Exo_34:6-7. The intercession of Moses urged that the honor of the Lord would suffer if He carried out His threat, for the heathen nations would not accept the true reason, alleging instead that the God of Israel was, after all, unable to fulfill His promises. Having urged this one point, Moses immediately added a second motive why the Lord should execute mercy rather than justice.
v. 17. And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, He should reveal and prove Himself as great in mercy, according as Thou hast spoken, saying,
v. 18. The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Cf Exo_34:6-7. That is the manner of effective prayer: it takes hold of the Word and promises of the Lord and urges His truth and mercy until He must confess Himself overcome.
v. 19. Pardon, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of Thy mercy, and as Thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now. It is the prayer of faith which does not allege merit and worthiness, but pleads only for mercy, for forgiveness, for pardon.
v. 20. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word; He had been vanquished by the appeal of Moses, by the two great reasons urged by this bold champion of the people.
v. 21. But as truly as I live, a most solemn oath by His own life, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, as a result of the measures which the Lord intended to take in punishing the people for their sins. He did not purpose to destroy Israel as a people, according to His first threat, but He did intend to punish the transgressors, the insurrectionists.
v. 22. Because all those men which have seen My glory and My miracles which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted Me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to My voice,
v. 23. surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked Me see it; in bringing His judgment to pass upon this generation, the Lord would contribute to the spreading of His glory through all the earth;
v. 24. but My servant Caleb, because he hath another spirit with him, not one of disobedience and rebellion, and hath followed Me fully, trusted absolutely in the merciful guidance of Jehovah, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it.
v. 25. (Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwelt in the valley. ) The part of Canaan over which Caleb would have dominion extended from the region of the Amalekites down to the lowlands where the Canaanites lived. Tomorrow turn you and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea; they were to turn their faces back to the desert and its desolation, until the punishment of the Lord would have gone into effect. In the same way the unbelievers that scorn the promises of God concerning the inheritance of the saints in light will find themselves excluded for all eternity from the blessings which they would not accept.