Bold Prayer and the Mercy of God

¹ When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” ²  So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” ³  So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴  And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” ⁵  When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” ⁶  And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

⁷  And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. ⁸  They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” ⁹  And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. ¹⁰  Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

¹¹  But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? ¹²  Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. ¹³  Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” ¹⁴  And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

“Moses' intercessory prayer was not more eloquent or more convincing in its arguments than many prayers in the Bible. Would it work? Moses surely hoped that it would and may have had a confidence that it would, but if so, his confidence may have been based more on his relationship with Yahweh than on his skill in prayer. In other words, because of who he was, rather than how he prayed, Moses could expect his prayer to be treated with compassion. He was the one Yahweh had chosen to bring the people out of Egypt and into Canaan. To reach only half the goal would hardly fulfill the expectation of faith that God had put within him. Reminding God of his promises was hardly needed from the point of view of God's memory; it was, rather, a means of showing his faith in who God was, something he also continued to pursue further in the aftermath of the people's sin (see comments on 33:12–18). Of course, God never desired to destroy his people in the first place, so he was willing to relent in response to Moses' appeal (v. 14). Nevertheless, the threat was genuine rather than theoretical, and the response of God reveals his willingness to respond to prayer. Indeed, this is one of many passages in Scripture that demonstrate God's responsiveness to the prayer of a righteous person prayed not for selfish reasons but out of a desire to see God's will accomplished. It is important to remember that Moses here stated that God “relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened”—which is not at all the same as saying that God agreed to do nothing. What he had threatened was to destroy Israel; what he ended up doing was to punish them with a plague (32:34–35), a lesser punishment but by no means an acquittal.”

“The Church has not yet touched the fringe of the possibilities of intercessory prayer. Her largest victories will be witnessed when individual Christians everywhere come to recognize their priesthood unto God and day by day give themselves unto prayer.”