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The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:20-33
The Mediatorial Guide. "Behold I send an angel before thee," etc. (Exodus 23:20). [We omit from homiletic treatment Ex 20:22-23:19, containing a large amount of minute legislation; but if any one for special reason wish…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:20
Mine angel shall go before thee. A prepared people have to be led into a prepared place (Exodus 23:20). To lead them a guide is necessary, and God provides a guide. I. THE GUIDE AND HIS OFFICE. 1. His nature and charact…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:20-31
God's promises sometimes absolute, but for the most part contingent on obedience. "Behold, I send an angel before thee." Here was a positive promise. An angel, a guide, a protector, would go before them throughout their…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:20-33
Promises and warnings. These conclude the Book of the Covenant. I. PROMISES. 1. An angel guide (Exodus 23:20-23). But this angel was no ordinary or created angel. He is repeatedly identified with Jehovah himself. God's…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:20-23
The angel of the covenant. Certain of the matters on which Jehovah had been speaking immediately before the promise of the angel, assumed that the people would assuredly come to dwell in a land very different from that…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:21
The angel provoked. The language in this passage is very strong, and may occasion difficulty. "Provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions; for my name is in him." If this angel is the Son of God, he who…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:21
Provoke him not. On the disobedience of the Israelites to this precept, see Numbers 14:11; Psalms 78:17, Psalms 78:40, Psalms 78:56, etc. My name is in him. God's honour he will not give to another. He does not set His…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:22
If thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak. The change of persons in the latter clause—"all that I speak," instead of "all that he speaks"—implies the doctrine of the perienchoresis or circuminsessio,…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:23
The Amorites, and the Hittites, etc. The nations of Canaan proper, to whom the Gergashites are sometimes added. See the comment on 2 Samuel 3:8. I will cut them off. Or "cut them down," i.e; destroy them from being any…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:24-33
The prospect in the promised land. I. THE TREATMENT OF ITS FORMER OCCUPANTS. 1. The avoidance of their idolatries. God cautions us against those dangers which we are most likely to overlook. When once the Israelites ent…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:24
Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works. It is always to be borne in mind that with the idolatries of the heathen were connected "works of darkness," which it is shameful even to…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:25
He shall bless thy bread and thy water. If the Israelites were exact in their obedience, and destroyed the idols, and served God only, then he promised to bless "their bread and their water"—the food, i.e; whether meat…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:26
There shall nothing out their young, nor be barren in thy land. This blessing could not have followed upon godly living in the way of natural sequence, but only by Divine favor and providential care. It would have rende…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:27
I will send my fear before thee. The fear which fell upon the nations is seen first in the case of Balak and the Moabites. "Moab was sore aft-aid of the people, because they were many" (Numbers 22:3). Later it is spoken…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:28
And I will send hornets before thee. This is scarcely to be taken literally, since no actual plague of hornets is mentioned in the historical narrative. "Hornets" here, and in Deuteronomy 7:20; Joshua 24:12, are probabl…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:29
I will not drive them out from before thee in one year. The Divine action is for the most part "slack, as men count slackness"—it is not hasty, spasmodic, precipitate, as human action is too often. Men are impatient; Go…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:31
And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines. This passage by itself would be sufficient to confute Dr. Brugsch's notion, that the Yam Suph (or "Red Sea" of our translators) is the Lak…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:32-33
EXPOSITION FINAL WARNING AGAINST IDOLATRY. The "Book of the Covenant" ends as it began, with a solemn warning against idolatry. (See Exodus 20:23.) "Thou shalt make no covenant with them nor with their gods." Thou shalt…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:32
Thou shalt make no covenant with them. See below, Exodus 34:12-15. According to the forms usual at the time, a treaty of peace would have contained an acknowledgment of the gods of either nation, and words in honour of…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 23:33
They shall not dwell in the land. This law did not, of course, affect proselytes; nor was it considered to preclude the continuance in the land of the enslaved Gibeonites. It forbade any Canaanite communities being suff…
Matthew Henry on Exodus 24:1-8
A solemn covenant was made between God and Israel. Very solemn it was, typifying the covenant of grace between God and believers, through Christ. As soon as God separated to himself a peculiar people, he governed them b…
Israel's Acceptance of the Laws. (b. c. 1491.)
ISRAEL'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE LAWS. (B. C. 1491.) The first two verses record the appointment of a second session upon Mount Sinai, for the making of laws, when an end was put to the first. When a communion is begun betwee…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 24:1-8
COMPLETION OF THE COVENANT, AND ASCENT OF MOSES INTO THE CLOUD ON SINAI. EXPOSITION THE RATIFICATION OF THE COVENANT. The giving of the Book of the Covenant being now completed, Moses, having received directions with re…
The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 24:3
And Moses came. Moses descended from the mount, and reported to the people all the words of the Lord—all the legislation contained in the last three chapters and a half (Exodus 20:19, to Exodus 23:33), not perhaps in ex…