Exodus 33:1-6

XXXIII.
THE HUMILIATION OF THE PEOPLE AT THE THREAT OF GOD’S WITHDRAWAL.

(1-6) If God consented at all to renew His covenant with the people, after they had so flagrantly broken it, the terms on which He would renew it were, in strict justice, purely optional. In the “Book of the Covenant” He had promised to go up with them by an Angel, in whom was His Name (Exodus 23:20): i.e., by His Son, the Second Person in the Holy Trinity. He now, to mark His displeasure, withdrew this promise, and substituted for the Divine presence that of a mere angel. “I will send an angel before thee” (Exodus 33:2); “I will not go up in the midst of thee” (Exodus 33:3). Dimly the people felt the importance of the change, the vast difference between the angelic and the Divine, and “mourned” their loss (Exodus 33:4). mourned with some touch of real godly sorrow, and, as was the custom of the Orientals in mourning (Terent. Heaut. ii. 3, 47; Herodian. iv. 2, &c.), “put off their ornaments.”