32:13,14
Moses clearly knew that God had made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and knew them in some detail. How would Moses know this? It is likely that things were passed down orally, and they may have been written down as well. Whatever the case we see that Moses was living by the word of God. He was not “in it for himself”. Likewise, while the gospel brings many benefits, it must be the word of God that guides us. And this not just in terms of promises here and there, we need to have a sense of the bigger picture of God’s plans and the heart of God. Moses could have thought that the Israelites deserved to be wiped out, and at one level he would have been right. They had experienced so much, and yet rejected God at the first opportunity. Instead Moses was committed to God’s overall plan. “The Lord relented ...” This is taken to be an “anthropomorphism”, i.e. expressing things in terms of the way humans act and react. God never intended to wipe them out, He knew what Moses would do, and we see how closely God involves men in His plans.
32:15,16
Moses returned from the mountain, carrying the two tablets of stone. These would have been quite small tablets, and there was writing on both sides. The tablets had been created by God, and the writing on them was the writing of God. Men chose to worship a useless idol, when they could have had the very words of God Himself.
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