Messiah in the Old Testament were unconditional. God would not have gone back on His word spoken
centuries before by Jacob.
26
In Exodus 32 God chooses His words carefully, to lead Moses into exactly the kind of test He
intended for His servant. Scripture teaches that God prepares people in advance for the testing process, and
that He puts someone to the test for that person's good, and for the glory of God. Moreover, there are a
number of Scriptural examples in which God, while testing a person, seems to take one stance, but actually
has something else in mind, as the outcome shows.
In Genesis 22 God puts Abraham to the test by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac. God knows in
advance what Abraham will do, and that God's purpose will be accomplished. God did not actually want
the patriarch to slay his son; other Scriptural references proclaim clearly that God abhors child sacrifice.
The Angel of the Lord prevents Abraham from killing Isaac, not because God has had a change of mind,
but because Abraham has successfully met the test, by God's grace and power. As a result of this crisis
Abraham's faith reaches its highpoint; he holds steadfastly to the word of God, as the author of Hebrews
indicates.
In Genesis 32, the Angel of the Lord wrestles with Jacob. At first this seems to be a stance of
hostility on the part of God; in the end, however, God blesses Jacob. Through this test God causes Jacob to
grasp Him and His word, so to speak, with bulldog tenacity.
When the Canaanite woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter, Christ apparently ignores her, not
answering her a word. When she persists, Christ gives her a somewhat insulting, and far from encouraging,
response. Of course, Christ goes on to heal her daughter. Christ knew all along what He would do. He
acted and spoke as He did to test the woman, to exercise her faith, so that she could display herself as
spiritually bold and persistent.
Partial analogies to these examples are found in Genesis 18 and Luke 24. In the former passage,
God appears determined to exterminate totally the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. By the end of the
chapter God agrees to take a different position, in response to the petitioning of Abraham. Because of the
John Knox, 1991), p. 284; and Walter Kaiser, Jr., "Exodus," in Volume 2 of The Expositor's Bible
Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), p. 479.
26
Unless God planned to raise the Judahites from the dead, which seems unlikely. Cf. Genesis 22, and
Hebrews 11:17-19. The command to sacrifice is one thing; "I will devour" gives a much different
impression.