These words come at the lowest point in Israel's wilderness story. The people have just made the golden calf. Moses has shattered the first tablets. The covenant is, technically, broken before the ink is dry. And here on Sinai, in answer to Moses' plea to see his glory, God does not show Moses a face — he speaks a name. The self-disclosure of YHWH that follows is the verse Israel will quote back to God for the rest of the Old Testament. Jonah, Joel, the Psalms, Nehemiah — all of them lean on this moment. It is, in a real sense, Israel's primary creed about who their God is.

From the writers we read together

Carmen Joy Imes

Old Testament scholar, author of Bearing God's Name

Imes' argument is that we tend to read Exodus 34:6 as if it ended at "steadfast love and faithfulness." We embroider it on pillows. But the proclamation continues: he will by no means clear the guilty. The God who reveals himself at Sinai is not a sentimental deity who excuses sin; he is a covenant Lord whose mercy is real precisely because his judgment is real. Take away verse 7b and you have not made him kinder — you have made him smaller.

What this means for the reader of Exodus is that grace is the deeper word, but it is not the only word. The chesed of YHWH reaches to thousands of generations; the visiting of iniquity reaches to four. The math is not subtle. But neither is it cheap. Israel will spend the rest of the canon learning that the God who carries iniquity (Ex. 34:7 uses nasa, "to lift") eventually carries it on himself. Sinai is already pointing toward Calvary.