I’ve been a bit of a firebrand with my posts so far, so I’m going to do something intentionally different today. This blog was always intended to investigate the complexities of scripture, because I believe there is richness and beauty in it. I’ll expand upon this thought at a later date, but I find encouragement in the opening words of the book of Psalms:

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2 ESV

So today, I’ll try to draw you into one of my meditations to share the beauty I see in it.

---

One of the passages that really inspired this blog is one that I hope many people are familiar with, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s in Exodus – before the drop-off in reading plan compliance in Leviticus. This passage comes after the incident with the golden calf:

So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Exodus 34:4–7 ESV

There’s lots to discuss here, including more than a few sermons you could get into, but I’ll try to leave those people at pulpits. Instead, let me zoom out a little.

The Plot

The narrative structure of the Bible is messy. It has many different plots, interwoven with one another, some small, others large ones built up from smaller plots. This is where a lot of the complexity and beauty comes from.

So what’s the plot here? Well I mentioned the golden calf incident, let me circle back to that, and maybe back to some other things.

God spoke the ten commandments to Moses in chapter 20, and he passed them on to Israel in chapter 24. Here’s the first few verses:

And God spoke all these words, saying,
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
— Exodus 20:1–4 ESV

These words were handed to Israel in chapter 24 and written down. More than that, though, chapter 24 reads much like a Jewish wedding – the vows are read in the form of the covenant being made, and both parties agree to become united by the covenant. This is an exclusive, binding, intimate agreement, entered into willingly by both parties. Moses and the elders represent the people of Israel, and the people themselves serve as witnesses, as do the previous promises and covenants to which God has been faithful.

The ceremony itself is followed by a feast, and then an intimate meeting and knowledge between the two parties. And Moses returns to God, and receives further instruction on the tabernacle – the house in which God was to dwell, to be with His people and meet with them as He was meeting with Moses. For the first time since the fall, the creator can live with what He created in His own image – this is a reconciliation the scale of which we haven’t seen before.

And then we get to chapter 32, which the ESV titles “The Golden Calf”. Think about this story in light of the wedding banquet that had basically just ended – this becomes a story of the bride cheating, trampling on the vows she just made and breaking the groom’s heart. The Israelites had just agreed to love the Lord as their one God, and to not make idols, and yet that is exactly what they do – and borrow some methods of worship from other cultures’ idols to boot.

So in this light, God’s reaction is almost starkly human. Moses, representing the bride, pleads with God to have a second chance. God seems to distance himself emotionally, and says things will never be the same between them – in fact, Israel will keep failing to uphold their side of the covenant. However, Moses again begs God to stay, to uphold His promise to Abraham, and He agrees.

Now we get to chapter 34, the dramatic climax of this lovers’ quarrel. In this scene, the two embrace lovingly again. God reveals his glory to Moses, that experience of intimate knowledge, and the two renew the covenant they had made together.

The moment is made all the more powerful by God’s repeated use of the covenant name; every time you see “LORD”, it is the name He gave to Moses from the burning bush: “I Am”. It is the name that means He will not change, nor turn His back; the name He gave to Abraham when making the promise that He was now fulfilling in Moses and the Israelites. Every enunciation is a reminder that He has been faithful even when His chosen people have not, that He is still faithful to these people even after their betrayal, and that He will always be faithful to them.

The Poem

Central to this climax is what God says about Himself, starting with the covenant name: “I Am, I Am, a God merciful and slow to anger…”

This is the beginning of a very carefully crafted collection of descriptors which rhyme in meaning and sound (at least when spoken in the original Hebrew). The Bible Project has a great analysis you can watch here. The two “stanzas” create these tensions which get at the complexity of God’s own character. He is patient with those who wrong Him, yet He won’t simply let every guilty person walk free. He will forgive iniquity, but he will also visit it upon children. In fact, He will visit justice to the third and fourth generation – yet, at the same time, will love steadfastly thousands.

So who will face justice, and who will get mercy? On one hand, this is one of many theological questions better left for a pulpit, but I think we can find at least a partial answer if we pick up where we left off in chapter 20, continuing the commandment against idolatry:

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:5–6 ESV (emphasis added)

Here, we see very similar language, but we also get an answer to our question: God will have mercy upon those who love Him, and those who choose not to love him will not receive his mercy. In God’s poem about himself, we find this bit of poetic justice: we, as His people, choose our own fate. God’s justice is only to give us what we asked for.

The Bigger Plot

The themes we see in this episode play out across the rest of the Bible. In particular, the tension between justice and mercy is a unifying theme through the tales of the Old Testament that drives tensions higher, through Israel’s division, fall, and exile, into the second temple period. What followed was a few hundred years of silence in which there were no major prophets, after which God finally resolved that tension. Jesus came to earth to fulfill all of these covenants on our behalf, and in doing so to reconcile us to God – he payed the price of our sin so that we can be with our Lord, face to face.

So if we take a step back, we see how this narrative fits into that overall story: time and time again mankind has fallen short of God’s perfection, and every time He has given us mercy if we will only give Him our hearts. In the Old Testament the price for our broken promises was the law of priests and sacrifices, yet in the perfect high priest of Jesus and his sacrifice of himself, we now have a perfect reconciliation.

If you really want to see how much Jesus ties into the earlier story, spend some time in the book of Hebrews. For example, the word translated as “make propitiation” in this verse actually has its roots in the Hebrew “mercy seat”, described in Exodus as the throne of God where the high priest annually atoned for the sins of Israel:

Therefore [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:17 ESV

The same verse is also explaining how Jesus is a perfect high priest, fulfilling the role God gave to Moses in Exodus, and being worthy of even more glory than Moses. Elsewhere, the author describes how Jesus’ perfection as a high priest allows him to perfectly reconcile us to God, allowing us to pass behind the curtain of the temple – something that would have killed any Israelite when God’s glory sat behind it. And yet this is reflected by the events of his crucifixion:

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

Matthew 27:51 ESV

The letter to the Hebrews is absolutely chock full of other references to the Old Testament scriptures. These references help draw a straight line over thousands and thousands of years – God’s plan playing out from Adam to Abraham to Moses; then through the judges to David; through the division and fall of Israel to prophets like Elijah; into exile with Daniel; then back to Jerusalem with Ezra and Nehemiah.

Empires rose and fell in this time. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome all served their purpose in God’s plan – Rome, specifically, brought about an empire, a peace, and a road network that let Jesus’ redemption be shared far and wide. And this plan, and this spread, continues today as Jesus welcomes every nation and tongue into the covenant family.

I think if you lean back far enough to see God’s perspective, you’ll see the beginning and ending of time itself within His plan. At such a grand scale, I think we can only wonder and awe at what a truly amazing tapestry He has woven, and the glimpse of it that we can see. And with thousands of years of work, I think as the Psalmist said, there is truly enough to meditate upon every day and night of our lives.