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Does God have an ego? This is the question that kept running through my mind as I was reading this text. As the passage opens God is expressing His anger and frustration over His people’s insistence on worshipping false Gods. This anger is there because of what God did for His people. After He rescued them out of Egypt they had the nerve to worship another God.
As God is expressing this anger to Moses He tells Moses to “leave me alone.” This is a crucial point in the text. It almost seems as if God knows that Moses will try to talk Him out of leashing His wrath on His people. It seems in this verse that God knows that destroying His people would not be a good thing. Yet despite this he continues on and asks Moses to leave so He can be alone.
God then follows that exchange by reminding Moses of the promise God made to him. It’s almost as if God is telling Moses not to rock the boat. It almost seems like God is holding His promise to Moses above his head.
But perhaps even more surprising is Moses’ reaction to this. Most people, after being commanded by God, would do whatever they were told to do without asking questions. It is noted in this text that part of the reason Moses argued against God’s desires here was because he was seeking God’s favor. Perhaps Moses felt that God was simply testing him. Maybe Moses felt that God was letting His ego get in the way of His better judgment and that once He calmed down God would be grateful that Moses prevented Him from leashing His wrath out on His people.
In a very bold move Moses appeals to God’s sense of logic by pointing out that it would be counter-productive to destroy the very people that He rescued from captivity. If God does indeed have an ego Moses runs the risk here of making God even more upset by pointing out that God does not see the impracticality of what He is proposing. God appears to already be in a somewhat irrational state, by questioning His judgment Moses runs the risk of perpetuating that irrationality even more.
Moses then appeals to God’s sense of vanity when he points out that unleashing His wrath on His people would make it seem that He only rescued them out of Egypt so that He could destroy them. Again there is an inherent risk here of making God even more upset than He already appears to be. After all, why should an all-powerful God care what a few Egyptians think of Him anyway?
In the next sentence the reader sees the nature of the relationship between God and Moses. Moses tells God, he doesn’t ask or request, he tells God to “Turn from your fierce anger.” This shows that there was a level of comfort that Moses felt around God that perhaps was reserved only for those individually chosen by God. Perhaps it was even exclusive to Moses.
Moses then appeals to God’s sense of loyalty and trust by reminding Him of the promises He made to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. By doing this He reminds God that by going through with what He has proposed He will be breaking the promises He made to those three men. Again, Moses runs the risk of making God even more upset than He already is. To make such an assertion is to once again imply that God was letting His ego affect His judgment. Perhaps at this point Moses had begun to feel like he was wearing God down. Perhaps, because of the level of comfort he felt with God, Moses was able to see that God was beginning to see things more rationally and that this final appeal to His sense of loyalty might finally prevent Him from unleashing His wrath.
In the end, of course, Moses is able to convince God of the irrationality of destroying His people. Was Moses really the reason God held back? I can’t help but think that this had to have been some kind of test for Moses. Perhaps, in putting Moses through this test God was able to limit Himself enough so He wouldn’t be able to be rational without the assistance of Moses. Then again maybe it was His ego.