At one of their meetings, Moses brought up a concern that He had. Previously, when God was angry with the people for worshipping the golden calf, He said that He would no longer journey with the people personally. Moses was not happy about this. He wanted God to continue having a close relationship with him as well as with the people. So he made three requests of Yahweh:

1. Moses asked God to teach him and Israel His ways so that they would know how to please Him and find favour in His eyes. Moses dearly wanted to continue to learn from God and enjoy His presence, grace and favour.

2. Moses said that unless God went with them personally on their journey, they would not leave camp and set out. Moses recognised that the reason why Israel was special and unique among all the peoples of the world was because Yahweh was with them.

3. Moses asked to see Yahweh’s glory.

Yahweh agreed to Moses’ three requests.

As for seeing God’s glory, Yahweh told Moses that He would call out His own name to Moses when He appeared to him. What did that mean? It meant that God would tell Moses the meaning of His name as well as reveal His character. Yahweh told Moses that He is:

• compassionate

• merciful

• slow to anger

• filled with unfailing love

• filled with faithfulness such that He would show love to a thousand generations as well as forgive sins

• righteous and just and will not overlook sins of guilty ones, but He will limit the impact of a person’s sins to the third and fourth generation and no more.

Notice how the meaning of Yahweh’s name focuses on His attributes in relating with people?Yahweh is truly a relational God!

And Moses’ response to God’s revelation of His benevolence and justice was worship! He recognised how great Yahweh is and how sinful mankind is in comparison and he just had to worship and honour God.

Interestingly, Yahweh told Moses that he would not get to see His face, meaning His essential essence. This is because no fallen human can look upon the all-righteous God and live. (In earlier parts of the Bible, we saw that God did appear to Hagar and also to Jacob and they could live. This is because they saw the pre-incarnate Jesus. We will learn more about this later.)

God also told Moses to cut out two new tablets of stone. Yahweh would once again write the 10 Commandments on them, since Moses had smashed the previous stone tablets. These stone tablets were to be a tangible token of God’s unique relationship with Israel. After that, Moses continued to record more of God’s words for the people. In fact, he stayed with Yahweh on the mountain for 40 days and nights and God sustained him even without food and water.

Moses spent so much time with God that his face reflected God’s glory even after he left the mountain. But Moses wore a veil over his face to hide the fact that slowly, the glow was fading from his face.

Think about the meaning of Yahweh’s name. Look through the attributes He mentioned to Moses. What do you think of each of them as He relates to you? Is there any attribute that surprised you? Or does any of them change the way you think about Him or relate to Him?