The LORD said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’” Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.
Comment: It is several weeks since I last wrote a devotional from Exodus. Exodus is a history book dealing with the bringing out of the descendants of Jacob from Egypt to Mt Sinai and there giving them the ‘ten commandments’ and various other laws; instructing them to build a tabernacle and prepare them for, what would become, a forty year period of wandering through the wilderness until they arrived in the land which God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A historical record is not always sequential. At the end of ch 32 the people had been spared from the anger of God by the intercession of Moses. Being used to idols in Egypt they had produced a golden calf to worship while Moses was on the mountain receiving God’s instructions. In disgust and anger Moses had thrown down and broken the tablets of stone with the law written on them. This passage steps back and tells us a bit more of what happened before Moses interceded. Moses carried out the instructions that God had given him and told the people what God had said. God called them ‘stiff-necked’. What does that mean? They always wanted their own way and would not obey what God said, neither willingly nor quickly! God expressed His righteous anger and instead of travelling with them Himself would send an angel with them. Taking off ornaments was a sign of grieving and sorrow and hopefully repentance! From past experience reading about these ‘stiff-necked people, I wonder for how long their grieving will last.
Proverbs 21: 17 Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.
Prayer: Help me to learn from others’ mistakes, rather than making my own, Oh God.
As I read it! 