The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 32:10

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Now, therefore, let me alone. This was not a command, but rather a suggestion; or, at any rate, it was a command not intended to compel obedience—like that of the angel to Jacob—"Let me go, for the day breaketh" (Genesis 32:26).

Moses was not intended to take the command as absolute. He did not do so—he "wrestled with God," like Jacob, and prevailed. That my wrath may wax hot. Literally, "and my wrath will wax hot." I will make of thee a great nation.

(Compare Numbers 14:12.) God could, of course, have multiplied the seed of Moses, as he had that of Abraham; but in that case all that had been as yet done would have gone for nought, and his purposes with respect to his "peculiar people" would have been put back six hundred years and more.

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