34:4,5
So Moses did as he had been commanded, chiselling out the tablets, and going up the mountain. The Lord came down in the cloud and proclaimed His name, the LORD. Moses had seen the sin of the people and was appalled by it. He needed to know that God was the same, yesterday, today and forever. We too may well be dismayed at many of things we see going on around us, but the Lord is the same, He has not changed.
34:6,7
The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed who He was (and is). He is “compassionate and gracious”, “slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness”. So we have the compassion of the Lord. Then God says “He does not leave the guilty unpunished”. Justice and mercy go together. If we focus on just one of these aspects we do not have the truth. They go together. We see this supremely on the cross, which was a judgement on our sin, but the greatest act of mercy, for Christ took the judgement upon Himself. “Third and fourth generation” is an idiomatic statement, meaning the long term effects of sin. We can see the truth of this at the individual and national level. The sins of one person can affect their family for several generations, the sins of one generation can affect a nation for many years.
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