God reveals Himself in Exodus 34 as a God of equally astounding justice and mercy.
Revealing Himself to Moses following Moses’ intercession for the sinful and rebellious people
of Israel, God renews His covenant with the people and declares Himself “The LORD, the
LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, but who will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and
fourth generation.”1 In the books of Jonah and Nahum we see God does not only reveal these
attributes of Himself to the Israelites but to the Assyrian city of Nineveh as well, a sinful city that
nonetheless in the time of Jonah God brought to humble repentance. The prophet Nahum, who
came at a later point, then calls down a complete and final judgment on Ninevites who did not
repent. God’s declaration of His mercy and justice in Exodus 34, quoted and applied in the books
of Jonah and Nahum, make clear the necessity of repentance for the Israelites of Exodus, the
Ninevites, and even ourselves.
Exodus 34 is a key passage because in it God reveals Himself, renews His covenant with
Israel, and leads Moses and the Israelites to worship Him. To properly understand what God is
saying and doing requires a look back at what has been happening in the previous chapters of
Exodus. After God brings the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, He gives them His Law at Mount
Sinai, showing them how they could draw near to God and receive His blessings. While Moses is
on Mount Sinai, in the presence of God, the Israelites proceed to disobey the Law that God had
just given them by making a golden idol and worshipping it. This leads to God’s just wrath in the
form of a massacre of the evildoers and a plague that came upon the people, but because Moses
pleads for the people God does not completely destroy them. Following this intercession, Moses
continued to come before the Lord, leading the people in worship as he went into the Lord’s
1
Exod. 34:6-7
presence. Moses then asks God that His presence might be with the people, saying “For how
shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and all the people? Is it not in your
going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of
the earth?”2 The importance of this request is summed up well by John Durham in his
commentary on Exodus: “Though Israel has cancelled any possible claim to a continuation of the
gift of Yahweh’s Presence, deserving only the Absence Yahweh has promised, Israel cannot
continue to exist without that Presence.”3 For the sake of His glory, God gives mercy to Moses
and the people, promising to be with them and to reveal once more His ways for the people.
Moses then asks that he might see the glory of God, an amazing request which God proceeds to
grant in Exodus 34 by showing Moses who He is and subsequently renewing His covenant with
the people. John Piper says “The sheer fact that Exodus 34 exists is proof that God is a God of
mercy.”4 The rebellion of Israel and the amazing request of Moses that precede Exodus 34 make
it clear this passage is purely a gift of God’s grace.
In Exodus 34, God passes before Moses and declares who He is, following which Moses
receives the renewed covenant from God. The books of Jonah and Nahum, each prophetic works
concerning the Assyrian city of Nineveh, look to God’s revelation of Himself to Moses in
Exodus 34 to explain His actions toward the people of Nineveh. In Jonah we find Nineveh in a
state of rebellion against God, so utterly caught up in their evil that God purposed to destroy
them even as He purposed to destroy Israel after they made their golden calf. Jonah the prophet
had a simple message to the city: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Yet just as
God relented from His judgment on the Israelites, so did He show mercy to the Ninevites when
2
Exod. 33:6
John I Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary, (Word Books, Waco, Texas, 1987), 448.
4
John Piper, “The Lord, a God Merciful and Gracious,” Desiring God, October 7, 1984,
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-lord-a-god-merciful-and-gracious
3
they humble themselves in desperate repentance. The king of Nineveh called for his people to
fast and turn from their evil ways, and “when God saw what they did, how they turned from their
evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do
it.”5 We see here, as R.T. Kendall says in his commentary Jonah: An Exposition, that God “chose
to see their works in the same way that He chose to see their wickedness.”6 God chose to show
His character by His judgment on Nineveh’s wickedness and by His mercy as a response to their
repentance. When Jonah complained because God did not punish Nineveh, an enemy of Jonah’s
people, we see him recognize why God acted the way He did because of God’s revelation in
Exodus 34. In Jonah 4:2 the prophet says “That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I
knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
and relenting from disaster.”7 The second part of this verse is a quote from Exodus 34:6, where
God declares Himself “the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”8 Jonah wished for the Ninevites to be punished but
instead saw God prove Himself merciful and gracious, even as He did to the Israelites in the days
of Exodus. Kevin Youngblood expounds on how we see God in this: “YHWH’s mercy extends
well beyond Israel’s borders and well beyond Jonah’s comfort zone.”9 God is merciful to those
who repent, no matter how astounding this mercy may be to us.
While Jonah sees God exhibit His mercy and grace which He declared in Exodus 34:6,
Nahum, a prophet to Assyria approximately 100 years after the events of Jonah10, reveals God as
the God “who will by no means clear the guilty.” (Nahum 1:3) Nahum prophesies against
5
Jon. 3:10
R.T. Kendall, Jonah: An Exposition, (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., London, England, 1978), 195.
7
Jon. 4:2
8
Exod. 34:6
9
Kevin Youngblood, Jonah, Hearing the Message of Scripture, (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
2013), 61.
10
ESV Student Study Bible (Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2011), 1183.
6
Nineveh by declaring who God is, condemning them for their sin, and proclaiming the just
punishment God will bring on the Ninevites. Exodus 34:7 makes clear the complete destruction
that is the result of God’s justice, as God declares that He “will by no means clear the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and
fourth generation.”11 Nahum builds his prophecy off the justice of God as expressed in Exodus
34. The book of Nahum begins with a psalm describing God. According to David Baker in his
commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, “this opening hymn gives the theological
context of the book as showing God’s universal power and justice through the example of the
nation Assyria.”12 Nahum 1:7-8 says “The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he
knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end
of the adversaries, and will pursue his enemies into darkness.”13 Thus we see God’s attitude
toward those who oppose him. Nahum goes on to show how the Ninevites have made themselves
enemies of God, calling them “the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder.”14 Because of their
violence, deception, and robbery Nineveh is being judged, and God’s justice is perfect and will
prevail. After describing the horrors of Nineveh’s judgment, Nahum concludes by declaring
“There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap
their hands over you. For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?”15 Baker explains this
verse: “Assyria the mighty is dying from an incurable wound. Due to her own endless cruelty
and exploitation of others, this extremity is viewed not with compassion but with joy, as those
who hear of it exult with clapping hands.”16 Thus the book of Nahum makes Nineveh an example
11
Exod. 34:7
David Baker, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries,
(Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England, and Downers Grove, Illinois, 1988), 27.
13
Nah. 1:7-8
14
Nah. 3:1
15
Nah. 3:19
16
David Baker, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries,
(Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, England, and Downers Grove, Illinois, 1988), 39-40.
12
of the just God of Exodus 34:7 even as the book of Jonah made Nineveh an example of the
merciful God of Exodus 34:6.
Jonah and Nahum are examples of God’s response to two different attitudes man can
have before Him. In Jonah, we see the Ninevites turn from their sin in a solemn fast and put on
sackcloth. As Phillip Cary says in his commentary on Jonah, “they repent and worship in the
most profound way available to people who do not know the name of the Lord. Sackcloth is an
outward and visible form of bodily repentance. A belly repents by fasting, a heart repents by
being broken and contrite, a community repents by neglecting to eat and dress themselves
properly. So the people of Nineveh lay aside everything that would make them comfortable and
content with their lives, putting on destitution like a garment, as if to say: “We are beggars who
have nothing - have mercy on us!”17 God sees them come to Him for mercy and repents from His
purposes of judgment. On the other hand Nahum condemns a bloody, prosperous, and proud
Nineveh to the judgment of God, saying in chapter one verse 14 “I will make your grave, for you
are vile.”18 Each of these books quote Exodus 34 as a source for their interpretation of the
character of God. Thus we also should read Exodus 34 as a revelation of God’s character, that He
is merciful to those who humble themselves before Him and a just punisher to those who do not.
Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”19 If then we are
sinners just as the Ninevites were, we too must humble ourselves before God in repentance if we
are to be saved! As Rosemary Nixon says in her commentary on Jonah “the act of repentance
renews and revitalizes the human-divine bond once broken.”20 God’s character as shown in
17
Phillip Cary, Jonah, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids,
Michigan, 2008), 111-112.
18
Nah. 1:14
19
Rom. 3:23
20
Rosemary Nixon, The Message of Jonah, The Bible Speaks Today, (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove,
Illinois, 2003), 172.
Exodus 34 and the books of Jonah and Nahum calls each of us to turn to Him so we can receive
His mercy, grace, faithfulness, and steadfast love.
0
