Exodus 33:1 ¶ And the LORD
said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou
hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it: 2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I
will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite,
the Hivite, and the Jebusite: 3 Unto a
land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee;
for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.
4 And when the people heard these evil
tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments. 5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto
the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into
the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy
ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee. 6 And the children of Israel stripped
themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.
Remember
what God said to Abraham.
Genesis 15:12 ¶ And when
the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of
great darkness fell upon him. 13 And he
said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve
them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve,
will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. 15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace;
thou shalt be buried in a good old age. 16
But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the
iniquity of the Amorites is not
yet full.
Apparently, God has now had just about enough of the Canaanites
nonsense with their idolatry, sexual perversion as a facet of religious
expression, and all sorts of other garbage. When will He have had enough of
your country’s excesses? He judged the countries of Europe on World War One’s
battlefields and in the great influenza epidemic afterwards that killed more
people than in all of the battles of what they called at the time, “The Great
War.”
A land flowing with milk
and honey is a reference to the fertility and
produce of Canaan. We do not think of the land that Israel occupies now as
being fertile and lush. Israel may have once been covered with great forests
that were cut down for iron production. And although there is a diverse
meteorology and ecology in Israel from the snows of Mount Hermon in the Golan
Heights to the reforestation after the Ottoman Empire cut down most of the
remaining forests to make railways in the 19th century it is
believed that the climate was much milder in the tenth century BC. We know, as
only those who believe the Bible can know, that the earth has been drying out
since the great Flood of Noah’s time. We would expect it to be a more fertile
place then than now.
Numbers 13:23 And they came
unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of
grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs.
God is going to drive out the Canaanites from before the Hebrews.
Here is one of those great and sad turning points in the Bible, where God, who
already knew what would happen announces something He is going to do other than
what He truly desires to do.
In Genesis we had man and woman over creation, as stewards, a
royal family with dominion over the works of God’s hand.
Genesis 1:26 And God said,
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth.
But,
we know how that turned out.
Genesis 3:24 So he drove
out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a
flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Later, with God showing that it was His perfect will to rule over
the Israelites as their king it was His permissive will which was expressed due
to their wicked stubbornness. Kings, royalty, aristocracy, and, in fact, all human
government without God, over His people was the result.
1Samuel 8:7 And the LORD
said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say
unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected
me, that I should not reign over them.
Now, here, while God’s perfect will would have been to walk among
the Israelites, to dwell with them, to go in and go out of their camp and go
with them to their wars against the child-sacrificing, temple-prostitute
patronizing, Canaanites He expresses a change of plan. He will drive out the
Canaanites before them by His angel. But, the benefit of having God in the
camp, outside of the tabernacle, they will not know.
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this passage in Exodus, noted,
“God would have
brought them under the yoke of his law, and into the bond of his covenant, but
their necks were too stiff to bow to them. God would have cured them of their
corrupt and crooked dispositions, and have set them straight; but they were
wilful and obstinate, and hated to be reformed, and would not have God to reign
over them.”
What He promises later was something they could have had but their
stubborn willfulness rejected.
Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the
days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the LORD: 33
But this shall be the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the
LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
This will only be accomplished now when God comes to live as a
man, pays the price for our sin, and then rises from the dead for our
justification. The immense blessing that was offered and available to the
Israelites is rejected by their own behavior. Man cannot save himself. He can’t
even allow himself to be saved. It is God who does the work. But, here, the
Israelites have lost a great blessing. God knew this would happen but that
doesn’t make it any less a sad catastrophe.
As an application God wants to walk with the Christian. God
speaking to you through His word and you speaking to Him in prayer, waiting on
Him and obeying Him, as He guides you every day and directs your path, is God’s
perfect will. But so many who call themselves Christians prefer to push God
into a ritual they observe on a certain day, memorized prayers they make at
mealtime and bedtime, joyful hope at a wedding or birth of a baby, or tearful
hope at a funeral. But, they would rather not have God walk with them in their
midst. Their stubborn willfulness will not permit it.
The Israelites, as commanded, put off the jewelry that they had
used in their pagan worship. This is an act of repentance. As John the Baptist
demanded of the Jews of his day, and I am quoting these two verses to make a
side note about how the Bible defines words by substituting them for the words
that define them in different quotes;
Matthew 3:8 Bring forth
therefore fruits meet for repentance:
Luke 3:8a Bring forth
therefore fruits worthy of repentance,…
See
how meet is worthy. Hopefully, that will help you understand this verse better.
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD
God said, It is not good that
the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
But,
back to the passage. The Israelites have obeyed, for now.
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