LENT 2020: Day 7

• LENT 2020: Day 7
• Wednesday, March 4, 2020:
  Psalm 32; Exodus 34:1-9, 27-28; Matthew 18:10-14

“Hear me, O, hear me! All take heed! The LORD, the Lord Jehovah, has given unto you these fifteen — Oy! — Ten! — ten commandments — for all to obey!”

It’s hard to read Exodus 34, the story about the second set of Ten Commandments, without thinking of that comical scene of Mel Brooks as Moses from History of the World: Part I.

Growing up, we learned about the Ten Commandments, but we never actually read Exodus, and so when I watched History of the World as a teenager, I thought the idea of Moses dropping the tablets was just a joke, original to the comic genius of Mel Brooks. 

But, no, back in chapter 32, Moses really did drop the tablets. Actually, he didn’t just drop them, clumsily; he throws them down and smashes them out of anger.

The focus of this passage, though, is the confessional statement in verses 6-7, which Terence Fretheim calls “a statement of basic Israelite convictions regarding its God.”  Variations can be found in Nahum and Numbers and Nehemiah, Deuteronomy and Daniel and Lamentations, Jeremiah and Kings and the Psalms, as well as earlier in Exodus.

But when we compare our text with earlier versions in chapters 20 and 23, Fretheim observes a difference: “The new elements here are the references to God as ‘merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,’ and ‘forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.’”

“Also omitted,” he notes, “is the conditional phrase ‘who love me and keep my commandments’ with respect to the showing of steadfast love.”

It’s important for Christians to recognize that the idea that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath is just wrong. Mercy and love have been central to God’s character from the start.