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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