The Compassionate and Gracious God of the Old Testament

At a recent church event I sat across from a guest who was particularly interested in what I did for a living. When he found out that I taught Old Testament, he said, “I know the God of the Bible is one God, but when you read the Old and New Testaments, they present God in completely different ways!” It is easy to sympathize with his point of view. It can sometimes feel like there is a “God of the Old Testament” that does not have very much to do with a “God of the New Testament.”

Certain theological traditions speak in ways that seem to support that distinction. For example, Martin Luther famously spoke of the hidden God of the law versus the preached or revealed God of grace through Christ. On the one hand, there is God himself in terrifying majesty; on the other hand, there is God as revealed through his word in the Gospel.[i] While Luther used this distinction to describe how people can experience one God in two different ways, we sometimes use it more sloppily and end up portraying the God of the Old and New Testaments as two different gods.

Not only is it false and dangerous when we imagine the God of the Bible as two different gods; it also fails to deal adequately with the biblical witness about God’s character. While we can find plenty of evidence in the New Testament of Jesus’s kindness and grace, the Gospels also speak of his anger and his judgment. And while the Old Testament does portray God as breaking out in wrath against his people, it also frequently celebrates that God’s central quality is undeserved mercy.

Christians ought to ask ourselves frequently: Who is this God that I serve? and What is this God like? As Walter Moberly writes, “Who God is determines how he will act.”[ii] But who we think God is also affects our behavior and shapes our worship. The Old Testament reveals God’s character when Moses pleads with the Lord in Exodus 33:13: “If I have found favor in your eyes, make your way known to me, so that I may know you…”[iii] In the following chapter we find the Lord making his way known to Moses and revealing himself more fully than ever before. What we find in Exodus 34 is that the quality of the Lord’s mercy is so great that a radical breach of covenant does not end God’s relationship with Israel. Rather, in response to the earnest work of his prophet Moses, the Lord discloses himself as one characterized primarily by compassion, favor, and patience.

The place to start is with Moses, whom the Lord commissioned in Exodus 3–4 to be his mediator. As those chapters make clear, it is not a job that Moses was very excited about. Though he is later remembered as the greatest prophet of all time (Deuteronomy 34:10–12), Moses does not start well. He makes excuse after excuse until the Lord finally loses his patience and sends his brother Aaron along with him (Ex. 4:14–17). But in the course of their back-and-forth at the burning bush, Moses also finds out that the Lord is the same God that his ancestors worshipped (3:6, 15). This is not a new God, but it is a new name: “the Lord” (sometimes written YHWH). That name, “the Lord,” sounds like how one would say “he will be” in ancient Hebrew. As such, it reminds Moses of what God has promised both to him and to the Hebrews: The one who calls himself “I am who I am” (3:14) is the same one who has said that he “will be with” (3:12) Moses and the Hebrews in their suffering and on the difficult road ahead.[iv]

By the time we reach Exodus 32, however, Moses is in the thick of desperate mediation. While he had been up on Sinai, receiving “the two tablets of the testimony” written by the Lord himself (31:18), the Israelites had undertaken a full-on coup. Panicked that Moses had been gone so long, they turn to Aaron and ask him to take the lead: “Get up! Make us gods who will go before us! Because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!” (32:1) Without hesitation, Aaron does what they have asked: “He took (the gold) from their hand and he formed it with an engraving tool and he made it into a bull of molten metal” (32:4). It is difficult to know exactly how Aaron and the people thought this bull related to the Lord. Surprisingly, Aaron attempts to incorporate this new image into “a festival to the Lord” (32:5). Further, though they seem to have requested “gods” in the plural, Aaron makes only one image. Despite the lack of clarity on these points, the bull seems to be associated somehow with the Lord. Rather than trying to make something altogether different from the Lord, they are attempting to bring the Lord down to their space to work in their timeline. All the people proclaim, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!” To them, the bull is either a representation of the Lord’s power and strength, or it is an animal on which the Lord would invisibly ride, much as his presence would later be connected to the ark.

However this request for “gods” relates to the Lord in their own minds, it is clear that in God’s mind the people have broken the second commandment (cf. Ex. 20:4–6) before the tablets have made it down the mountain. The idolatry that sprang from their lack of trust and their impatience brings the history of the Israelites to the brink even as it is just beginning. The Lord tells Moses, “So now, leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and so that I may destroy them! But I will make you into a great nation” (32:10).

Faced with the determination of a powerful God to act in judgment against a wicked people, most of us would likely have moved aside. But not Moses. He steps into the gap and works hard to persuade God not to make good on this threat. Moses reminds the Lord of three things: (1) that he is the one who brought the people out of Egypt; (2) that the Egyptians would view him as a murderer if he does away with them now; and (3) that he has made an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give their descendants the promised land (32:11–13). Moses embodies the ultimate model of prayer as persuasion by doing precisely the job the Lord put him there to do: to talk back to him. In the context of a relationship of trust and obedience, he pleads with God to be God.[v] It works, and the Lord changes his mind about the disaster he had threatened to bring upon his people (32:14). Psalm 106:23 summarizes: “He said he would annihilate them, if it were not for Moses, his chosen one, who stood in the breach before him to turn back his anger from annihilating.”

The Israelites, however, do not get off scot-free, and the Lord will not automatically do whatever Moses asks. Once Moses makes it back down the mountain, he orders the bull destroyed and ground into powder. By making the Israelites drink it, he ensures that the image will be defiled and never again held sacred.[vi] Even though the Lord decides not to annihilate all his people, the Levites still go throughout the camp and kill “about three thousand people” who were not committed to the Lord (32:28). Once again, Moses steps in and attempts to persuade. This time, he offers himself in exchange for their lives: “So now, please forgive their sin! But if not, blot me out of the scroll which you have written!” The Lord keeps a Book of Life in which he writes the names of the righteous (Ps. 69:28 [Hebrew v. 29]), and Moses wants to be erased from it so that they may live (cf. Paul in Romans 9:3). This time, however, the Lord does not do as Moses had hoped: “Whoever has sinned against me—I will blot him from my scroll” (Ex. 32:33). Even more, the Lord promises that more punishment is coming. For he will now let the exodus project continue under Moses’s leadership, but with a critical difference: “My angel will go before you” (32:34). It is God’s way of saying that Israel can still go to the promised land, but that he’s not going with them.

So far, it seems that the stereotype of a wrathful and short-tempered Old Testament God is correct. In response to the Israelites’ abject failure at the foot of Sinai, the Lord threatens to burn the whole project down and start again. Moses intercedes with partial success, but he cannot get the Lord to go with them. The Lord reiterates in Exodus 33:3, “I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I destroy on the journey.” The Israelites are like a stubborn mule that doesn’t want to be led. God is essentially telling them that his absence would be for their own good. Realizing the gravity of the situation, the people go into mourning, and Moses steps into the breach once again.

Moses’s persistence is astounding, and to many of us it probably seems too bold. Time and again, he “gets in God’s way” to see if he can bring about change. Exodus 33:7–11 sounds a bit like an explanation or justification of Moses’s forward confidence: “But the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, just as a person speaks with his friend” (33:11). The point is that Moses’s relationship with God is special.

It is natural to think that we should not be so bold, because we are not great prophets like Moses. But the Apostle Paul actually makes the opposite argument in 2 Corinthians 3. He says,

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away… But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:12–18 NIV; cf. Ex. 34:29–35).

In short, Paul says that those who have the Holy Spirit can be even bolder than Moses, not less. So, while Moses is remembered as the greatest prophetic mediator of all time, Paul would have us believe that those who are in Christ may speak to God in an even more confident manner. The narrative in Exodus 32–34 teaches us not only about who the Lord is in essence but also about how believers may communicate with God in prayer. Not only should we ask, “Who is this God that I serve, and what is this God like?” We should also ask, “Who has God made me to be, and how does the Bible teach me to speak to him?” Moses is one of our great models.

The phrase “face to face” in Exodus 33:11 also introduces an important theme that recurs throughout the rest of the story. The Hebrew word for “face” (pānîm) is also used in phrases that mean “before” and “presence,” and those terms play off one another for the remainder of the chapter. The presence of the Lord is exactly the issue that Moses wants to solve, and when the Lord finally agrees to provide it, he does so because of their “face to face” relationship. Moses’s “face” impacts God’s “face” (presence). It is that unique rapport that fuels Moses’s boldness and also makes the Lord favorably disposed toward him. In a moment of crisis, Moses presses to know the Lord in an even deeper way, and the Lord grants it. That core revelation of God’s presence takes place in the larger context of a story that talks a lot about faces, eyes, favor, names, and knowledge.

Throughout the narrative the Lord has spoken about the Israelites as Moses’s people rather than his people. It is a curious detail. He says in Exodus 32:7, “Go down, because your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted ruinously.” And again in 33:1: “Go up from here—you and the people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt…” He sounds much like one parent saying to the other in frustration, “Your son is being such a pain today!” Moses could have been arrogant enough to concede that really he was the one in charge of the exodus project, but he knows better. Just as in Exodus 32:11, where he reminds the Lord that he is the one who led the people out of Egypt, he says in 33:13: “If I have found favor in your eyes, make your way known to me, so that I may know you, in order that I may find favor in your eyes. Consider that this nation is your people.” This is a feedback loop of favor, where Moses’s request is based on favor and is aimed at gaining still more favor so that he can continue to seek God’s favor. Out of that favorable relationship, he again speaks boldly: “this nation is your people.” This time, his plea works: “My presence (there is the word for “face” again) will go with you, and I will give you rest” (33:14).

Moses knows that whatever he thinks of his own leadership skills, it is really only the Lord’s presence that sets the Israelites apart from the nations. It is something they cannot do without, because lacking the Lord’s presence, the Israelites are not the Israelites. They are nothing. He says, “Then I and your people will be treated differently from all the people who are on the face of the earth” (33:16). He sounds a lot like the Apostle Peter when Jesus asks the disciples, “You do not want to leave too do you?” Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” (John 6:68–69 NIV) Any attempt to move forward without the presence of the One True God is an exercise in self-destruction. In response, the Lord reiterates: “This very thing which you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my eyes, and I know you by name” (33:17).

Names are especially important in Exodus. As T. Desmond Alexander has noted, the question “Who is the Lord?” is central to the entire book.[vii] That question relates to God’s name, his reputation, and his character, and it is one of the first things Moses asks God at the burning bush: “I am going to the Israelites, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Then they will say to me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” (3:13). As we noted earlier, God’s answer, “I am who I am” (3:14), puns on the phrase, “I will be (with you)” (3:12). Every time one evokes the name “I am,” one is also reminded of the Lord’s accompaniment to those who suffer. But God’s answer, “I am who I am,” also sounds quite like a non-answer. It is the sort of thing that someone might say if they did not want be known by someone else. Imagine you were in class on the first day of kindergarten and your teacher asked your name and you responded, “I am who I am.” It would sound more than a little evasive and likely even rude.

In Exodus 33 Moses takes the opportunity to deepen his relationship in order to know more about the meaning of God’s name—not just what his name is, but its very content and significance. He notes that the Lord knows his name, but he wants to know more about God’s name. His question, however, pertains to God’s glory: “Then Moses said, ‘Show me your glory’” (33:18). Christians talk a lot about God’s glory. It is worth asking ourselves, “What is the content of God’s glory? What does God’s glory mean?” Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the word “glory” is a designation for God himself. So Psalm 106:20 summarizes the golden bull episode: “They exchanged their Glory for the form of a bull that eats grass.” That seems to be what “glory” means in Exodus 33:18 as well. In fact, in his reply to Moses the Lord explicitly connects his glory both to his goodness and to his name: “I will make all my goodness cross over before your face, and I will call out the name ‘Lord’ before you” (33:19).

The Lord’s answer to Moses in 33:19 also contains a somewhat puzzling statement. He adds, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy; I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion.” What is that all about? It seems the Lord is essentially telling Moses: “I will allow you to know me more deeply, and I will reveal to you the content of my name. But just because you know me, don’t think that you can manipulate me.” We all know what it is like to reveal ourselves in deep and vulnerable ways to others, all the while realizing that they could one day use that knowledge against us. The Lord is telling Moses: “Remember that I will always remain utterly free and that no one can use knowledge of me to control me.” One cannot simply evoke the Lord’s name and expect the Lord to do one’s bidding like a genie in a bottle.

Chapter 33 closes with more plays between “face” and “presence.” The Lord has told Moses that his presence will go with him (33:14) and that he will proclaim his name, ‘Lord,’ in Moses’s presence (33:19), but that in that revelation, Moses cannot see the Lord’s face (33:20, 23). This is a paradox: Moses both will and will not see God. The Lord revealed also remains the Lord concealed. This is the mystery of a God who can be known by humans and yet still remains closed off from them. It is a reminder that even in our knowledge of God, we are engaging with a terrifying otherworldly majesty, and that although we see truly, we do not see fully.

In Exodus 34, Moses is commanded to ascend Sinai once again, bringing with him two new stone tablets. Upon seeing that the Israelites had broken the commandments by making a golden bull, an enraged Moses smashed the tablets on which God had written that very commandment (32:19; cf. 31:18). Now Moses presents himself with two newly hewn tablets so that the Lord can inscribe them again (34:4). But instead of immediately re-writing the commandments, the Lord makes good on his promise from 33:19. He passes in front of Moses and speaks his own name: “The Lord came down in the cloud, and he stationed himself with him there. And he called out the name, ‘Lord.’ The Lord crossed over before his face, and he called out, ‘The Lord, the Lord’” (34:5–6).

Exodus 34:6–7 is an exposition of the meaning of the name, “Lord.” Who is the Lord? What is his character? These verses answer that question. I often tell my students that if they could only memorize two verses from the entire Old Testament, it should be these:

‘The Lord, the Lord, a God compassionate and favorable, longsuffering and abundant in lovingkindness and steadfastness. One who safeguards lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving guilt, rebellion, and sin. But he will by no means refrain from punishment. He will visit the guilt of the fathers upon the sons and upon the grandsons, upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation’ (Exodus 34:6–7).

This is how the Lord self-reports what he is all about. In a moment of crisis, the Lord’s servant, Moses, has pressed in to know the Lord better, and the Lord grants him (and us) the fullest Old Testament revelation of his character. The one who had revealed himself as the one “who will be with” Moses (3:12) is now even more fully known as the compassionate and gracious God who is marked by patience and forgiveness.

One key word in this passage comes to describe the Lord’s character throughout the entire Old Testament. The Hebrew word is ḥesed, where the first letter is pronounced like “ch” in the name Johann Sebastian Bach (and not like the “ch” in cheese!). It is notoriously difficult to translate. So much so that Myles Coverdale coined the term “lovingkindness” in 1535 in an attempt to capture the various aspects of ḥesed—such as kindness, relational fidelity, and commitment—in one English word. Old Testament writers repeatedly turn to this characterization of who the Lord is, especially in relation to sin and one’s need for undeserved mercy.

It is common for Christians to speak of God’s justice, but it is equally common for us to imagine justice in a particularly American way. In ancient Greek and Roman traditions, justice was depicted allegorically as a woman. Many traditions in the United States follow suit and portray Lady Justice as blind-folded, symbolizing her impartiality. Additionally, she holds a set of balanced scales, symbolizing fairness and equity. These are good metaphors for a modern society founded on such principles, but we must note that this is not at all how the Bible depicts God’s justice. The Lord’s justice is not “equal parts” mercy and judgment, nor is his justice blind. The Lord is always wide-eyed, and as the Bible says again and again, his justice is partial to the poor. But most importantly for our purposes, Exodus 34:6–7 presses strongly against our concept of justice as balance. The Lord’s character, and thus his dealings with people, display a significant imbalance: mercy to thousands versus judgment to four. As a parallel text in Deuteronomy 7:9 suggests, the expression “thousands” in Exodus 34:7 may be an abbreviation for “a thousand generations.” So there is lovingkindness to a thousand generations on the one hand and punishment to three or four generations (i.e., great-great-grandchildren) on the other hand. In a society which prizes individualism, it is unsurprising that we are often shocked by the Bible’s vision of corporate responsibility, where children may be held to account for something their parents did.[viii] But we cannot miss the main point here, which is the huge disparity between thousands and four. These are not balanced scales. The Lord cannot rightly be characterized as equal parts mercy and judgment. Rather, as Feldmeier and Spieckermann note, “His wrath can only be discussed in glaring asymmetry to his love.”[ix] In fact, the notice of God’s punishment in 34:7 is a necessary warning aimed at those who would use the Lord’s apparently infinite patience as a license to continue in sin. The main note of Exodus 34:6–7 is the same one that James, the brother of Jesus, hits in his epistle: “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” (James 2:12 NIV).

Many ancient Near Eastern hymns outside the Bible praise the gods for their character traits. They are praises not so much about what the god or goddess does in the world of humans as much as they are about what the gods are like in the world of all the other gods. Exodus 34:6–7 praises the Lord for his character as one who is compassionate and favorable. But these character traits are necessarily displayed in relationship and are especially evident in God’s interactions in the world of humans. The Lord’s story is not simply “up there” among the heavenly powers and angelic hosts. Instead, the Lord has chosen his primary story to be “down here” in relation to his creation. God’s will-to-relationship is “the signature of his personality.”[x] And this will-to-relationship is governed by the quality of mercy. Exodus 34 asks us to believe that God is not only for himself but for his people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s claim about Jesus Christ offers a perfect analogy here: “Christ is Christ, not just for himself, but in relation to me. His being Christ is his being for me, pro me.”[xi] So also has the Lord chosen to reveal his character in relation to us. The Lord is not just lovingkindness in himself but lovingkindness for us. That what it means to be the Lord.

This truth led Old Testament writers to return again and again to exposit the meaning of the Lord’s lovingkindness for their lives. The Psalms especially are saturated with the same grace formula that we find in Exodus 34:6–7: “Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your lovingkindness, for they are from of old” (Ps. 25:6). “All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and steadfastness for those who safeguard his covenant and his statutes” (Ps. 25:10). The earth is full of the Lord’s lovingkindness” (Ps. 33:5). “You, Lord, are a God compassionate and favorable, longsuffering and abundant in lovingkindness and steadfastness” (Ps. 86:15). “The Lord’s lovingkindness is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him, and his righteousness to the sons’ sons” (Ps. 103:17). “The Lord is favorable and compassionate” (Ps. 111:4). “I will bow down to your holy temple, and I will praise your name on account of your lovingkindness and on account of your steadfastness” (Ps. 138:2). “Favorable and compassionate is the Lord, longsuffering and great in lovingkindness” (Ps. 145:8). We would do well to rehearse this grace formula again and again as we seek to understand what our God is like.

In a time of severe crisis, the Lord’s lovingkindness and Moses’s advocacy propel Israel’s narrative forward. When all seemed to be at an end and total judgment was warranted, mercy and compassion won out. The so-called “God of the Old Testament” is the God of the New Testament too. The continuity between the two could not be communicated more clearly than at the beginning of John’s gospel. He says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 NIV). What Jesus incarnates is what has always been true about God, and always will be. Jesus Christ embodies the character of the Lord, and he has made the Lord’s lovingkindness available and present among God’s people. When we behold the mercy and compassion of Jesus, we behold God’s glory itself. In fact, John’s phrase, “full of grace and truth,” could practically be a translation of the “lovingkindness and steadfastness” that the Lord revealed to Moses in Exodus 34:6. Having beheld God’s glory, “Moses quickly kneeled down to the ground and worshipped” (Ex. 34:8). And we should do the same.

[i] See Martin Luther’s “On the Bondage of the Will” in E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson, eds., Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation. Library of Christian Classics, Ichthus Edition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 201; Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 26–30. Luther’s Works 5. Ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968), 44-45.

[ii] R. W. L. Moberly, At the Mountain of God: Story and Theology in Exodus 32-34. LHBOTS (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1983), 73.

[iii] All translations of Old Testament texts are mine. Translations of New Testament texts are from the New International Version (NIV).

[iv] For a clear explanation of these word-plays in Exod 3, see Richard Bauckham, Who is God? Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 41-44.

[v] On prayer as persuasion, see Patrick D. Miller, “Prayer as Persuasion: The Rhetoric and Intention of Prayer,” Word & World 13/4 (1993): 356-362.

[vi] Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “The Golden Calf: Made by Man… or God?” Bible Review 20/2 (2004): 28-32, 47.

[vii] T. D. Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: In Introduction to the Pentateuch, 2d ed (Paternoster and Baker, 2002), 157-169.

[viii] On corporate responsibility in the Old Testament, see Joel S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible. LHBOTS 197. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.

[ix] Reinhard Feldmeier and Hermann Spieckermann, God of the Living: A Biblical Theology, trans. Mark E. Biddle (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011), 133.

[x] Feldmeier and Spieckermann, God of the Living, 109.

[xi] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 47.