Matthew Henry on Exodus 33:1-6
Here is, I. The message which God sent by Moses to the children of Israel, signifying the continuance of the displeasure against them, and the bad terms they yet stood upon with God. This he must let them know for their further mortification. 1. He applies to them a mortifying name, by giving them their just character - a stiff-necked people, Exo 33:3, Exo 33:5. "Go," says God to Moses, "go and tell them that they are so." He that knows them better than they know themselves says so of them. God would have brought them under the yoke of his law, and into the bond of his covenant, but their necks were too stiff to bow to them. God would have cured them of their corrupt and crooked dispositions…
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I will not go up . . . lest I consume thee--Here the Lord is represented as determined to do what He afterwards did not. (See on Exo 32:7).
Adam Clarke on Exodus 33:3
I will not go up in the midst of thee - Consequently, the angel here promised to be their guide was not that angel in whom Jehovah's name was: and so the people understood it; hence the mourning which is afterwards mentioned.
John Gill on Exodus 33:3
Unto a land flowing with milk and honey,.... Abounding with all the necessaries and good things of life, a description of the land of Canaan frequently made, see Exodus 3:8,
for I will not go up in the midst of thee; would not grant them his presence in so near, visible, and respectable a manner as he had before done, though he would not utterly forsake them: the tabernacle was before in the midst of the camp, that is, that which was erected until the large one, ordered to be made, was finished, but now it was removed without the camp, Exodus 33:7.
for thou art a stiffnecked people; See Gill on Exodus 32:9,
lest I consume them in the way; in the way to the land of Canaan, and so never get…
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