Exodus 33:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

I will not go up in the midst of thee by my own special and gracious presence, as hitherto I have done, but I will depart from thee. In pursuance hereof God removes his tabernacle without the camp, Exodus 33:7. I will only make good my promise to thy fathers, and send an angel to accomplish it, but I will show no peculiar and further kindness to thee. Lest I consume thee in the way; lest thy sins should be aggravated by my presence and favour, and thereby I should be provoked utterly to destroy thee. So he shows that their perverseness makes this severity necessary for them, and that God even in his judgment remembers mercy to them.

Exodus 33:3

3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.