Exodus 33 Summary and Study Guide: Moses Asks to See God’s Glory

God offered Israel the promised land, an angel to drive out six nations, and a country flowing with milk and honey. Then He told them He would not be going with them. This Exodus 33 summary and study guide follows what Moses did with that offer.

Setting the Stage

Up the mountain, God told Moses what the whole rescue from Egypt had been for: “Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). God wanted a tent in the middle of the camp so He could live among His people. Moses spent forty days receiving the design for it.

At the foot of the mountain the people gave up waiting and made a golden calf instead (Exodus 32:1-6). Moses begged God not to destroy them, and God left the matter hanging: an angel would go ahead, and their sin would be dealt with later (Exodus 32:34).

Exodus 33 opens there, with the promise of Exodus 25:8 in doubt. For where this sits in the wider story, see our Book of Exodus summary by chapter.

Comprehensive Exodus 33 Summary

God tells Moses to leave Sinai and take the people up to the land He swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He will send an angel ahead of them, drive out the six nations living there, and hand over a country of milk and honey. The one thing He withholds is Himself. He will not travel among them, because they are a stubborn people and His nearness would destroy them on the road.

The camp hears this as bad news and goes into mourning. At God’s word the people strip off their jewellery at Horeb. The earlier chapters say where that gold came from: the Egyptians handed it over as Israel left, and Aaron melted some of it down for the calf (Exodus 12:35-36; 32:2-4).

Moses takes a tent, pitches it a long way outside the camp, and calls it the Tabernacle of the congregation. Whenever he walks out to it, the whole nation stands at their own tent doors and watches him go. The cloudy pillar comes down at the door, God talks with Moses there as a man talks with his friend, and the people bow down where they stand. Joshua stays behind in the tent.

Then Moses prays. He asks God to show him His ways so that he may truly know Him, and God answers that His presence will go and give him rest. Moses turns down an answer covering only himself and asks again for the whole nation. God grants it.

Moses pushes once more, this time to see God’s glory. God promises instead to send all His goodness past and to announce His own name, and warns him that no one can see His face and live. So He gives him a place on a rock, a crack to stand in, and His own hand as a cover while the glory goes by.

One Word Summary

• Presence: the one thing God withheld and Moses would not go without
• Intercession: Moses argues God out of a decision He had already announced
• Glory: the closing request, answered on God’s terms

In One Sentence

After the golden calf, God tells Moses that Israel can have the promised land without Him, and Moses turns the offer down and prays until God agrees to go with the whole nation, then begs to be shown God’s glory.

Theme of Exodus 33

Exodus 33 is about the presence of God, and what it costs a people to lose it. God offers the land, the angel, the victory and the milk and honey, and both Moses and the people treat the withdrawal of God Himself as the loss of everything. Two ideas run alongside it.

Distance is the chapter’s picture of sin, since the meeting place moves outside the camp and only those who wanted God walked out to it. And God reveals Himself truly without revealing Himself completely, which is why Moses’ request to see God’s glory is answered with goodness, a proclaimed name, a rock, and a hand over the face.

Exodus 33 Outline

• Exodus 33:1-3: God tells Moses to leave Sinai for the promised land, renews every promise, and says He will not go up among the people Himself.
• Exodus 33:4-6: The people mourn the news and strip off their ornaments at Horeb.
• Exodus 33:7: Moses pitches a tent far outside the camp, calls it the Tabernacle of the congregation, and anyone seeking the LORD has to go out to it.
• Exodus 33:8-11: Every time Moses walks out there the nation stands and watches, the cloudy pillar comes down at the door, God speaks with him as with a friend, and Joshua stays behind in the tent.
• Exodus 33:12-14: Moses presses God about who will go with them, and God promises His presence and rest.
• Exodus 33:15-17: Moses asks again for the whole nation rather than himself alone, and God agrees.
• Exodus 33:18-20: Moses asks to see God’s glory, and God promises goodness and His name instead, because no one can see His face and live.
• Exodus 33:21-23: God gives Moses a place on the rock, a crack to stand in, and His hand as cover while the glory passes.

Moses’ Prayer for God’s Presence

The centre of this chapter is a conversation, and it runs as four exchanges. Each time God answers, Moses asks for more.

• Moses asks to know God (verses 12-13). He starts by holding God to what God has already said, and he asks for two things at once, understanding for himself and mercy for the nation: “shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.” Show me how You work, so that I actually know You, and do not forget that these people belong to You.
• God answers with presence and rest (verse 14). “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” God says He will go in person and bring him to a settled place.
• Moses refuses a private answer (verses 15-17). He asks again for everyone, and God gives him the whole thing: “I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.” God grants the request, and says the reason is Moses himself.
• Moses asks for glory, and God sets a limit (verses 18-23). The answer changes what was asked for: “I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee.” God will send everything good about Himself past Moses and say His own name out loud. Then the limit: “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

Moses never tells God that Israel deserves any of this. He argues from God’s own words, from mercy God has already shown, from the fact that the people belong to God, and from what the watching nations would conclude. That is the whole case, and God grants it.

Observations from Exodus 33

God Answers Moses Alone Before He Answers Israel

When God says “I will give thee rest” in verse 14, the “thee” is singular in the Hebrew. The promise covers Moses and nobody else. That is why Moses answers the way he does in verse 15, switching to the plural: “carry us not up hence.” Handed a private mercy, Moses hands it straight back and asks for the nation instead. He will not arrive safely on his own while the people he leads travel without God.

Everyone Watched, But Only Some Went Out

Verse 7 says that “every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle.” Anyone who wanted God had to leave the camp to find Him. Verses 8 and 10 describe something different: all the people rose and stood, each man at his own tent door, and looked.

Watching cost nothing and everyone did it. Going cost the walk, and Moses names only one group who made it, the ones who sought the LORD. Wanting God Himself is what this chapter is about, and here the difference shows up in footsteps.

Grace Is the Word Moses Prays With

The word “grace” turns up in four verses of this chapter, 12, 13, 16 and 17, and every one of them falls inside Moses’ prayer. “Know” or “known” appears in five, verses 5, 12, 13, 16 and 17, and the two run together: God knows Moses by name, and Moses asks to know God. A chapter that opens on a people who deserve nothing ends up talking almost entirely in the language of unearned favour.

The Tent Is Pitched Where the Tabernacle Was Never Meant to Stand

God’s stated plan was a sanctuary in the middle of the camp so that He could dwell among them (Exodus 25:8). What Moses pitches in verse 7 is “without the camp, afar off from the camp.” Outside, and at a distance.

The chapter never says why Moses chose that spot, but it says twice in one verse that the tent was outside the camp and far from it, and God had just refused to go up in their midst. Anyone in the camp could see where God’s meeting place now was, and how far they would have to walk to reach it.

Difficult Verses Explained

How Could God Speak to Moses Face to Face and Then Say No One Can See His Face?

The two statements are nine verses apart and they use “face” in two different ways. Verse 11 describes how God spoke to Moses: “the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” God talked with him directly and openly, the way friends talk. Numbers 12:6-8 draws the same contrast, where God says He speaks to other prophets in dreams and visions but to Moses “mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches.”

Verse 20 has a different subject, the undimmed sight of God Himself, and John 1:18 settles that one: “No man hath seen God at any time.” A minority of teachers read verse 11 as a literal appearance of Christ before His birth, and a minority read the danger in verse 20 as something other than death. The warning of verse 20 is plain enough to leave standing as it is.

What Does It Mean That Moses Would See God’s “Back Parts”?

Verse 22 hides Moses in what the King James calls “a clift of the rock,” which most other Bibles spell cleft and which means a crack in the rockface. 

The Hebrew word for “Back parts” is used elsewhere of the back or the rear of a thing, and many teachers read it here as what was left behind after the glory had gone by, rather than a view of God from behind. Either way the point of verses 22 and 23 is the same: Moses was allowed to see something real and was not allowed to see everything.

Why Would God’s Presence Have Destroyed Israel?

The chapter supplies the reason alongside the threat. God says, “I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way” (Exodus 33:3).

A stubborn people and His own holiness at close range would end in their destruction, so He keeps His distance to keep them alive. What sounds like abandonment is stated as protection, which is why the camp was right to mourn it and Moses was right to plead against it.

Did God Change His Mind Between Verse 3 and Verse 17?

What God said He would do changes, and Scripture also says that God Himself does not change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). Both stand. God says He will not go up among them in verse 3, Moses prays in verses 12 to 16, and God says “I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken” in verse 17.

How to hold those together has been discussed by Bible teachers for centuries without a settled answer. What the chapter does show clearly is that Moses appealed to what God had already promised, and that God treated the prayer as something worth answering.

Common Misunderstandings

• That the tent in verse 7 is the tabernacle of Exodus 25 to 31. It is not. That tabernacle had been designed but not yet built, and it was not raised until Exodus 40:17. The confusion is partly a naming one: the King James calls this tent “the Tabernacle of the congregation,” and most modern translations call the later structure the tent of meeting, so the same English words end up on two different tents.
• That Moses got to look at God. The chapter says the opposite twice, in verse 20 and again in verse 23. Moses saw something and lived, and what he was shown was carefully limited.
• That the ornaments were thrown away. Exodus 33:6 says the people stripped them off, and it says nothing about destroying them. Later, gold ornaments are among the things brought willingly for building the tabernacle (Exodus 35:22).

Christ Connection

Moses asked to see the glory of God and was told he could not see God’s face and live. What he was given instead arrives in the next chapter, spoken out loud: “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). Merciful, kind, slow to lose patience, and overflowing with goodness and honesty. God answered a request to see Him with a description of what He is like.

The New Testament then puts that description in a face. Paul writes that God “hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The glory Moses asked for, in the face he was refused, is what God gives openly in His Son.

John tells it as a story: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). God came to be looked at.

The rest of the chapter reaches the same place from several directions:

• The refused face, on another mountain. Moses, who was hidden in a rock at Sinai, later stands in the open at the transfiguration with Jesus, whose “face did shine as the sun” (Matthew 17:2-3). Matthew never draws the line back to Exodus 33, but the man refused one sight is standing in front of the other.
• Outside the camp, again. Israel had to leave the camp to seek God (Exodus 33:7). Hebrews uses the same phrase of Christ, saying Jesus “suffered without the gate” and telling believers to “go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach” (Hebrews 13:12-13). Go out to Him, and carry the shame of it. Hebrews is working from the sin offering burned outside the camp rather than from this tent, and it arrives at the same picture.
• The one who stands between. Moses stands between God and a guilty nation and they are kept. Scripture names one mediator, “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5), who “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by Him (Hebrews 7:25).
• The rest God promised. God said “I will give thee rest” to Moses (Exodus 33:14). Jesus said “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), and offered it to anyone who would come.
• Spoken to as a friend. God spoke with Moses “as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Jesus told His disciples, “I have called you friends” (John 15:15), and He was speaking to ordinary men.

When, Where, and Why

• When: During Israel’s stay at Mount Sinai, in the months after the golden calf and before the tabernacle was built. Scripture sets the boundaries: Israel reached Sinai in the third month after leaving Egypt (Exodus 19:1), the tabernacle was raised on the first day of the first month of the second year (Exodus 40:17), and Israel left Sinai in the second month of that year (Numbers 10:11). The calendar year of the exodus itself is debated and the Bible does not give it.
• Where: At Sinai, called Horeb in verse 6. The chapter moves between two places that matter: the camp, which God says He will not enter, and a tent pitched deliberately outside it.
• Why: Moses is writing the account of how Israel became a people with God living among them, and the golden calf had put that whole purpose in danger. This chapter records how the promise of Exodus 25:8 survived. Without it, the building instructions of Exodus 25 to 31 lead nowhere and the tabernacle of Exodus 35 to 40 has no reason to be built.

Key Verses

“And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.”

Exodus 33:15

Moses tells God not to move them one step further without Him. The chapter is built to produce this sentence: a man handed a whole country who says he would rather stay in the desert.

“is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.”

Exodus 33:16

Moses asks what else would tell Israel apart from every other nation, if God is not travelling with them. Without God going with them, Israel is one more people group with a good address.

“And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.”

Exodus 33:18

“Shew” is the old spelling of show. Moses is asking God to let him see His glory, and he asks it after God has already said yes to everything else, which shows what he actually wanted all along.

Key Lessons from Exodus 33

• News that should have thrilled the camp sent it into mourning instead, because the one thing missing from the offer was God (Exodus 33:1-4).
• Israel’s sorrow showed in what the people took off rather than in what they said (Exodus 33:4-6).
• The people who never went into the tent still worshipped from their own doorways when they saw the cloud (Exodus 33:10).
• Where God could not give Moses what he asked for, He made a way to give him what he could bear (Exodus 33:20-23).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: 17 Life-Changing Lessons from Exodus 33.

Bible Study Questions

1. In Exodus 33:1-3, what does God still promise Israel, and what is the one thing He withholds?
2. The people mourn in verse 4 and strip off their ornaments in verse 6. What does the chapter actually say about their response, and what does it stop short of saying?
3. Verse 7 says everyone who sought the LORD went out to the tent, while verses 8 and 10 say all the people watched from their own doors. What is the difference between those two groups?
4. Moses is offered rest for himself in verse 14 and asks for the whole nation in verse 15. What does that tell you about how he saw his own position?
5. In verse 16 Moses says God’s presence is what separates Israel from every other people on earth. What would be true of your own life if that presence were withdrawn?
6. God answers a request for glory with goodness and a proclaimed name (verse 19). Why might that be a better answer than the one Moses asked for?

Frequently Asked Questions

Exodus 33, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:

2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:

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.

4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.

5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.

6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.

7 And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp.

8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.

9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.

10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door.

11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.

13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.

14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.

15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.

16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.

17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.

18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.