Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 14:19
Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.
Verse 19. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people] From Nu 14:13-19 inclusive we have the words of Moses’s intercession; they need no explanation, they are full of simplicity and energy; his arguments with God (for be did reason and argue with his Maker) are pointed, cogent, and respectful; and while they show a heart full of humanity, they evidence the deepest concern for the glory of God. The argumentum ad hominem is here used in the most unexceptionable manner, and with the fullest effect.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
After many and great provocations; show thyself still to be the same sin-pardoning God.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people,
according unto the greatness of thy mercy,…. Intimating, that though the sin of this people was great, the mercy of God to pardon was greater; and therefore he entreats that God would deal with them, not according to the greatness of their sins, and the strictness of justice, but according to the greatness of his mercy, who would, and does, abundantly pardon;
and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now; which shows both that these people had been continually sinning against the Lord, ever since they came out of Egypt, notwithstanding the great goodness of God unto them, and that he had as constantly pardoned; and therefore it was hoped and entreated that he would still continue to pardon them, he being the same he ever was, and whose mercy and goodness endure for ever: he had pardoned already sins of the like kind since their coming out of Egypt, as their murmurings for bread in the wilderness of Sin, Ex 16:1, and for water at Rephidim,
Ex 17:1, and even a greater sin than these, idolatry, or the worship of the calf, Ex 32:1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
19. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people. In order to encourage his hope of pardon, he first sets before himself the greatness of God’s mercy, and then the past instances by which it had been proved that God was inclined to forgiveness. And, indeed, the mercy of God continually invites us to seek reconciliation whenever we have sinned; and, though iniquities heaped upon iniquities, and the very enormity of our sins, might justly make us afraid, still the abundance of His grace, of which mention is here made, must needs occur to us, so as to swallow up all dread of His wrath. David, also, betaking himself to this refuge, affords us an example how all alarm is to be overcome. (Psa 51:1) But, since the bare and abstract recognition of God’s goodness is often insufficient for us, Moses applies another stay in the shape of experience: Pardon, (he says,) as thou hast so often done before. For, since the goodness of God is unwearied and inexhaustible, the oftener we have experienced it, the more ought we to be encouraged to implore it; not that we may sink into the licentious indulgence of sin, but lest despair should overwhelm us, when we are lying under the condemnation of God, and our own conscience smites and torments us. In a word, let us regard this as a most effective mode of importunity, when we beseech God by the benefits which we have already experienced, that He will never cease to be gracious.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
19. Pardon the iniquity Moses makes no attempt to appease God by bloody sacrifices. He knows that Jehovah cannot be bought off by gifts and slain victims. Here Mosaism is in striking contrast with Gentilism, which, in the hour of peril, always runs to its altar with its sacrifice to placate some offended deity. Moses casts himself upon the divine clemency, pleading the glory of Jehovah’s great name.
The greatness of thy mercy Mercy, and mercy only, is the plea of Moses. Not one moral excellence, not one meritorious act of Israel, is adduced as the ground of pardon. Under both the old covenant and the new, salvation is grounded solely on reasons existing in the divine mind, while the condition of that salvation is man’s asking for it by faith. The faith of Moses prevails for Israel.
From Egypt until now Every instance of God’s mercy in the past may be urged as a reason for its repetition; but the past clemency of human governors toward offenders justifies a more severe penalty.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Num 14:19 Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.
Ver. 19. According to the greatness of thy mercy. ] God’s power pleaded, Num 14:17 and his mercy here are the Jachin and the Boaz whereon faith resteth.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Numbers
MOSES THE INTERCESSOR
Num 14:19
See how in this story a divine threat is averted and a divine promise is broken, thus revealing a standing law that these in Scripture are conditional.
This striking incident of Moses’ intercession suggests to us some thoughts as to
I. The ground of the divine forgiveness.
What was true when Moses prayed for the rebels is true to-day. Christ’s work is the consequence, not the cause, of God’s pardoning love. It is the channel through which the waters reach us, but the waters made the channel for themselves.
II. The persistency of the divine pardon.
His past is the guarantee of His future. This is true of every one of His attributes. There is no limitation to the divine forgiveness; you cannot exhaust it.
Sometimes there may be long tracts of almost utter godlessness, or times of apathy. Sometimes there may be bursts of great and unsanctified evil after many professions of fidelity, as in David’s case. Sometimes there may be but a daily experience in which there is little apparent progress, little consciousness of growing mastery over sin, little of deepening holiness and spiritual power. Be it so! To all such, and to every other form of Christian unfaithfulness, this blessed thought applies.
We are apt to think as if our many pardons in the past made future pardons less likely, whereas the truth is that we have received forgiveness so often in the past that we may be quite sure that it will never fail us in the future. God has established a precedent in His dealings with us. He binds Himself by His past.
As in His creative energy, the forces that flung the whole universe forth were not exhausted by the act, but subsist continually to sustain it, as ‘He fainteth not, neither is weary,’ so in the works of His providence, and more especially of His grace, there is nothing in the exercise of any of His attributes to exhaust that attribute, nothing in the constant appeal which we make to His forgiving grace to weary out that grace. And thus we may learn, even from the unfading glories of the heavens and the undimmed splendours of His creative works, the lesson that, in the holier region of His love, and His pardoning mercy, there is no exhaustion, and that all the past instances of His pardoning grace only make the broader, firmer ground of certainty as to His continuous present and future forgiveness for all our iniquity. He who has proposed to us the ‘seventy times seven’ as the number of our forgivenesses will not let His own fall short of that tale. Our iniquities may be ‘more than the hairs of our heads,’ but as the psalmist who found his to be so comforted himself with thinking, God’s ‘thoughts which are to usward’ were ‘more than can be numbered.’ There would be a pardoning thought for every sin, and after all sins had been forgiven, there would be ‘multitudes of redemptions’ still available for penitent souls.
There is but one thing that limits the divine pardon, and that is continuous rejection of it.
Whoever seeks to be pardoned is pardoned.
III. The manner of the divine forgiveness.
It is a blessing that He does so, and a sign that we are pardoned, if we rightly use it.
IV. The vehicle of the divine forgiveness.
‘Moses was faithful in all his house’ but Jesus is the true Mediator, whose intercession consists in presenting the constant efficacy of His sacrifice, and to whom God ever says, ‘I have pardoned according to Thy word.’
Trust utterly to Him. You cannot weary out the forgiving love of God. ‘Christ ever liveth to make intercession’; with God is ‘plenteous redemption.’ ‘He shall redeem Israel out of all his iniquities.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Pardon: Exo 32:32, Exo 34:9, 1Ki 8:34, Psa 51:1, Psa 51:2, Eze 20:8, Eze 20:9, Dan 9:19
according: Isa 55:7, Tit 3:4-7
and as thou: Exo 32:10-14, Exo 33:17, Psa 78:38, Psa 106:7, Psa 106:8, Psa 106:45, Jon 3:10, Jon 4:2, Mic 7:18, Jam 5:15, 1Jo 5:14-16
until now: or, hitherto
Reciprocal: Num 14:13 – And Moses said unto the Lord Neh 9:17 – a God Isa 63:7 – according to his Dan 9:4 – the great Dan 9:9 – To the Lord