Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 3: God's Name Proclaimed -- Merciful, Gracious, Slow to Anger -- and the Covenant Renewed

Reading

Historical Context

Exodus 34 opens with an act of staggering grace disguised as a simple instruction: “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first” (34:1). The first tablets were entirely God’s work – “the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets” (32:16). Now Moses must cut the stone himself, though God will still write on them. The detail is not incidental. The first giving of the law was pure divine initiative; the second, after the calf, requires human participation in the restoration. The same words will be inscribed, the same covenant renewed – but the context has changed entirely. These tablets are written in the aftermath of catastrophe. They are, in a sense, grace made visible: the same God, the same law, the same commitment, extended a second time to a people who did not deserve a first.

God descends in the cloud and stands with Moses on the mountain, and what follows is the most significant self-revelation in the entire Old Testament. “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” (34:6-7). The Hebrew is dense with theological weight. Rachum (“merciful”) shares its root with rechem (“womb”) – the visceral, maternal compassion of one who has carried life within. Channun (“gracious”) describes favor given freely, not earned. Erekh appayim (“slow to anger”) literally means “long of nostrils” – the Hebrew idiom pictures anger as hot breath through the nose, and God’s nostrils are long, meaning his anger travels a great distance before it arrives. Rav chesed v’emet (“abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”) pairs covenantal loyalty (chesed) with bedrock reliability (emet). Together they describe a love that is both fiercely committed and utterly trustworthy.

This verse – often called the Middot HaRachamim, the “Attributes of Mercy” in Jewish tradition – is the most quoted verse within the Old Testament itself. It appears in whole or in part in Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, and Nahum 1:3. The prophets and psalmists return to it as a touchstone whenever they need to articulate who God fundamentally is. Its placement here – not at creation, not at the exodus, but in the aftermath of the golden calf – is theologically decisive. God reveals his deepest name not in a moment of triumph but in a moment of betrayal. The fullest disclosure of divine character comes precisely when the people least deserve to hear it.

The tension within the verse is the engine of the entire biblical narrative. God “forgives iniquity and transgression and sin” – three Hebrew terms (avon, pesha, chatta’ah) covering the full spectrum of human wrongdoing, from deliberate rebellion to unintentional error. And yet he “will by no means clear the guilty” (v’naqqeh lo yenaqqeh). The double negative is emphatic: the guilty will absolutely not go unpunished. How can both be true simultaneously? How can God forgive and not clear the guilty? The sacrificial system of Leviticus will attempt to honor both halves through substitution – the guilt is real, the penalty is paid, but it falls on an animal rather than the sinner. But even that system is provisional. The full resolution awaits the cross.

The covenant is renewed with stipulations (34:10-26) that echo and expand the earlier covenant code. Moses remains on the mountain forty days and forty nights without food or water (34:28) – a fast that only divine sustaining could make possible. When he descends, his face is shining (qaran). The Hebrew root qaran is related to qeren (“horn”), which is why the Vulgate translated it as cornuta (“horned”), leading to centuries of artistic depictions of Moses with horns. The meaning, however, is radiant – Moses’ skin emits light from prolonged exposure to God’s presence. The shining is so intense that the people are afraid to approach, and Moses begins veiling his face when he speaks to them, removing the veil only when he returns to speak with God (34:33-35). The veil both reveals and conceals: it testifies that Moses has been with God while shielding the people from a glory they cannot endure.

Christ in This Day

The self-revelation of Exodus 34:6-7 – the God who is simultaneously merciful and just, who forgives and yet does not clear the guilty – finds its resolution not in a theological system but in a person nailed to wood. Paul states the logic with compressed intensity in Romans 3:25-26: God put Christ forward “as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Both halves of Exodus 34:6-7 are honored at the cross. Justice falls – the guilty are by no means cleared, and the full penalty for avon, pesha, and chatta’ah is exacted. Mercy rises – iniquity, transgression, and sin are forgiven, because someone else has borne their weight. The tension that Exodus 34 proclaims as paradox, the cross resolves as gospel. The question the Old Testament asks for a thousand years – how can God forgive the guilty without clearing the guilty? – has a one-word answer: substitution.

John’s prologue is a deliberate echo of this moment. When John describes the incarnate Word as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), the phrase is not a generic summary of Jesus’ character. It is a translation of the Hebrew chesed v’emet – “steadfast love and faithfulness” – from Exodus 34:6. John then adds: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). The kavod that passed before Moses in the cleft, proclaiming mercy and justice in the same breath, is the same glory John saw in Christ. What Exodus 34 proclaims as divine attributes, the incarnation embodies in a divine person. The God who could only be heard on the mountain can now be seen in the village. The name that was proclaimed to Moses is now lived out in Jesus.

Paul’s treatment of Moses’ shining face in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 deepens the christological significance further. The glory on Moses’ face was fading – a transient radiance that diminished as Moses moved away from God’s presence. Moses veiled his face, Paul argues, “so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end” (2 Corinthians 3:13). The veil concealed not just the glory but its impermanence – the fact that the Mosaic covenant, for all its splendor, was temporary. “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (3:16). In Christ, the glory does not fade. It transforms: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (3:18). Moses reflected a glory that was passing away. Believers in Christ behold a glory that is permanent – and in beholding it, they are changed into its likeness. The face that shone on Sinai pointed forward to the face that shines forever.

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

The Middot HaRachamim of Exodus 34:6-7 reverberates through the entire Old Testament. Numbers 14:18 – Moses quotes it back to God during the spy crisis, pleading for mercy. Psalm 103:8 – David celebrates it as the ground of personal forgiveness. Joel 2:13 – the prophet calls Israel to repentance on the basis that God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Jonah 4:2 – Jonah quotes it in anger, furious that God’s mercy extends even to Nineveh. Nahum 1:3 – the prophet quotes the “slow to anger” clause but pivots to the justice clause, warning that God “will by no means clear the guilty.” The same verse fuels both hope and warning, depending on where the reader stands.

New Testament Echoes

Romans 3:25-26 resolves the tension of Exodus 34:6-7 at the cross – God is both “just and the justifier.” John 1:14 translates chesed v’emet as “grace and truth” and applies it to the incarnate Word. 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 contrasts the fading glory of Moses’ face with the permanent, transforming glory available in Christ. Hebrews 8:6-13 identifies the new tablets as the new covenant written on hearts, fulfilling what the second set of stone tablets could only promise.

Parallel Passages

Compare Exodus 34:29-35 (Moses’ shining face) with the Transfiguration accounts (Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36), where Jesus’ face shines “like the sun” and Moses himself appears alongside him. The mountain, the glory, the shining face, the cloud – every element of Exodus 34 is present, but now the glory belongs not to a mediator who reflects it but to the Son who radiates it. Compare also Jeremiah 31:31-34, where the new covenant is written not on stone but on hearts – the ultimate fulfillment of what the second set of tablets inaugurated.

Reflection Questions

  1. God revealed his fullest name not in a moment of Israel’s faithfulness but in the aftermath of the golden calf. What does this timing tell you about the nature of grace? How does it reshape the assumption that God reveals himself most powerfully when we are at our best?

  2. Exodus 34:6-7 holds mercy and justice together without resolving the tension: God forgives iniquity and does not clear the guilty. Where in your own understanding of God do you tend to emphasize one attribute at the expense of the other? How does the cross hold both together?

  3. Moses’ face shone from being in God’s presence, but the glory faded when he moved away. Paul says that in Christ, we behold a glory that does not fade but transforms us “from one degree of glory to another.” What practices keep you in the presence of God long enough for that transformation to take hold?

Prayer

LORD, you have proclaimed your name – merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. You spoke it not when we deserved to hear it but when we least deserved anything at all. We stand in the wreckage of our own golden calves, and you meet us there – not with the annihilation we have earned but with the character you have always possessed. We praise you that the tension of your name – forgiving iniquity yet by no means clearing the guilty – has been resolved at the cross, where justice fell and mercy rose in the same breath. We thank you for Jesus, in whom your chesed and emet are not merely proclaimed but embodied, in whom the glory that faded from Moses’ face now shines permanently and transforms all who behold it. Remove our veils. Let us see your glory in the face of Christ. And in seeing, may we be changed – from one degree of glory to another, until we bear the image of the Son who is the radiance of your being. Amen.