SUMMARY
God and Moses debate over who is responsible for the people who had come out of Egypt.
ANALYSIS
Moses engages in deep argument with God to reestablish God’s commitment to Israel. In the midst of such a serious issue, it is striking to see the tone in which the narrator depicts the exchange between Moses and God. God describes the people as Moses’ people whom he had brought out of Egypt. God severs the pronoun relationship of the covenantA covenant is a promise or agreement. In the Bible the promises made between God and God's people are known as covenants; they state or imply a relationship of commitment and obedience. More. God no longer says, “My people.” But in an almost comedic fashion Moses replies to God that the people are God’s people whom God brought out of Egypt. If the stakes were not so high, we could call this an Abbott and Costello routine. But, of course, everything depends on how the pronouns will work in the future. All the promises of Genesis that have been reiterated as God’s motivation for bringing Israel out of the land of Egypt are now in jeopardy. The narration uses strikingly anthropomorphic terminology. Just as in Exodus 2:23-25 God is said to have “remembered”-as if God should have to be reminded-“his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” so here Moses argues against God’s decision on the basis of the same covenant (32:13). Besides which, how would God look to the Egyptians if, after defeating them decisively, God kills the very people God has rescued from their control? The frankness of the argument indicates that the narrator is willing to speak with a directness made possible by a confident faith.
Here we see early in Scripture that part of the role of the prophet is to advocate for the people to God. God first commits not to destroy the people, but Moses must struggle even more to have God commit to being present with the people. Absence of destruction does not reconstitute a covenant relationship; God needs to dwell among the people. That God commits to do so is dramatized by Moses being permitted to see the “back” of God and by the actual building of the tabernacleThe tabernacle, a word meaning "tent," was a portable worship place for the Hebrew people after they left Egypt. It was said to contain the ark of the covenant. The plans for the tabernacle are dictated by God in Exodus 26. More through which God had earlier promised to maintain a continued presence in the midst of Israel.
