Wednesday: God’s Righteous Wrath
Daily Lesson for Wednesday 10th of September 2025
Read Exodus 32:9-29. What was Moses’ reaction to God’s threat to destroy Israel?
While Moses was still on Mount Sinai, God said that He would destroy the rebels and make Moses’ posterity into a great nation. But that was not what Moses wanted. Instead, he pleaded with the Lord, pointing out that the Israelites were not Moses’ people—they were God’s. He, Moses himself, had not brought them out of Egypt, but God had done it through His mighty works. And so Moses pled with God, stressing His early promises to the fathers. Moses was truly working as an intercessor between God and humanity.
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After the “Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people” (Exodus 32:14, NKJV), Moses returned to them. There is no record—unlike what would happen in Exodus 34:29-30—that his face shone from the presence of the Lord. His face probably reflected his anger.
“When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 32:19, NIV). Breaking the tablets containing the Decalogue was an external sign of breaking its content. God rebuked Moses for it, but later He commanded Moses to chisel two tablets to replace “ ‘the first tablets, which you broke’ ” (Deuteronomy 10:2, NKJV). God Himself would rewrite the commands.
Moses sharply rebuked Aaron for surrendering to the demands of the people. “ ‘What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?’ ” (Exodus 32:21, NIV). Aaron tried to excuse his transgression by (1) blaming others, and (2) by magic: “ ‘I threw it [the gold] into the fire, and out came this calf!’ ” (Exodus 32:24, NIV). What made matters worse was that Aaron himself had been greatly honored of God, having been given many privileges, which included going on the mountain with Moses and the 70 elders (Exodus 24:1).
What a dark irony! By claiming that a miracle had happened, Aaron wanted to trick his brother (notice how one sin leads to another; in this case, idolatry to lying). However, Moses was not fooled as he saw how wildly the people behaved. The negative consequences were evident, and Moses had to stop the rebellion immediately.
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What should this story teach us about the power of intercessory prayer? Whom should you be praying for right now? |
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I think we all get a bit nervous when anger and wrath are mentioned in the same sentence with God. This may sound like a digression, but God said:
.., and I have always thought there was a lot more to it than just physical likeness. I think it also includes intelligence, freedom of choice and emotions.
For example, I think of the enormous pleasure I get out of learning something new and I wonder if God has given me something he cannot give himself because of his omniscience. I am trying to extrapolate back from my experience of pleasure to describe God.
The issue for us is that while we are very familiar with human emotions, projecting those emotions back to God just doesn’t work all that well. And I think that applies to anger, wrath and sadness just as much as it applies to joy and happiness. We don’t really know how to describe God’s emotions because we are human and can only use our limited human language.
Now, when we talk about God’s wrath, it is not the “spit the dummy” angry reaction we humans use. We sometimes use the idea of “righteous wrath” but even that concept is tainted with our human understanding.
So God was not happy with the behaviour of the Hebrews and in his wrath wanted to destroy them and start afresh with Moses. It is useful to understand that out of this picture of God’s wrath develops a powerful illustration of intercession that gives us the bigger picture of what a wrathful God really looks like. That is way beyond our human wrath.
And for some reason, the author as split this part of the lesson in two, so we will have to continue this discussion tomorrow.