I. IN THE SPIRIT OF IT:

1. How absolutely disinterested (ver. 14)! He sets aside, without even taking notice of it, the most glorious offer ever made to mortal man - "I will make of thee a nation," etc.

2. How intensely earnest (ver. 18)! Moses feared greatly. He had a most overwhelming sense of the reality of the wrath he sought to avert. But his heart was agonizing to save his nation, and he seemed to clasp the feet of God in the spirit of one who would not, could not leave, tilt he obtained what he sought. A lesson in prayer.

3. How perseveringly prolonged (ver. 25)! He prayed by his silence as well as by his speech. The whole scene is a striking illustration of the intercession of the Savior.

II. IN THE MATTER OF IT. It is not much, as M. Henry remarks, that he can say for them. He appeals, however, to three principles in the Divine character which really govern the Divine action.

1. To God's regard for his own work (ver. 26). The finishing of work he had begun (Philippians 1:6).

2. To God's regard for his own servants (ver. 27). The love he bears to the fathers (Deuteronomy 4:81; 10:15).

3. To God's regard for his own honor (ver. 28). He cannot bear to think of God's action being misconstrued - of God's honor being compromised. Points in God's heart on which all intercession may lay hold. - J.O.

This prayer brings out in its greatest strength a contrast which goes through the Book of Deuteronomy, and through the whole Bible. The Israelites are the people of God, His inheritance, redeemed by His mighty hand. They are stubborn, stiff-necked, wicked. One all-important contrast suggests itself the moment we open the Scriptures. They do not set forth the history of man seeking for God, but of God seeking for men. In the Book of Exodus we have very distinct records of the life of Moses, but no one could possibly think that it was the object of that book to give us a biography of him or of any other man. Moses is called out by God to know His name and to do His work; that is the account which he gives of himself. This was his holiness; he was separated, set apart by God to act as His minister. He who set him apart revealed to him His character — showed him that righteousness, and not self-will, was governing the universe. To separate Moses the righteous man from Moses the deliverer of the Israelites is impossible. He could not have been righteous if he had not fulfilled that task, he could not have been righteous if he had not testified in all his acts and words that God, not he, was the deliverer. We miss the whole meaning of the story — the saintship of Moses disappears altogether — if we try to conceive of him apart from his people. It was a holy nation because God had called it out, had chosen it to be His, had put His name upon it. The family of Abraham was signed with God's covenant, and was declared to be holy. Was it not so actually? Was it only so because Jacob was the head of it, or because Joseph was a member of it? The Scripture is careful to preserve us from any such feeble notions. It forces us to see that Joseph was better than his brethren, just because he identified himself with the family, and they acted as if they did not belong to it; because he believed that God had chosen it, and they forgot that He had; because he did, and they did not, believe it to be holy. The nation of Israel was told that the invisible God was actually their king; that He had brought them out of the house of bondage; that He was with them in the wilderness; that He would be with them in the promised laud. Supposing any Israelite to believe this, he was a strong, brave, free man; he could overcome the enemies of his land; he could tread his own underfoot. See, then, how reasonable the prayer was which I have taken for nay text. Because Moses regarded the Israelites as a holy and chosen people, redeemed by God's own hand; because he believed that this description belonged to the whole covenant people at all times; therefore he felt with intense anguish their stubbornness, their wickedness, and their sin. Had they not been a holy people he would not have known in what their sin consisted. It was the forgetfulness of their holy state — the choice of another — which he confessed with such shame and sorrow before God; it was because they had gone out of the right way, forgetting that they were a nation, each man preferring a selfish way of his own — each thinking that he had an interest apart from his neighbour, apart from the body to which he belonged — that they needed his intercession and God's renewing and restoring mercy. And Moses could ask for that restoring mercy; he had the power to pray, because he was sure that he was asking according to God's will, because he was sure that he was asking that that which resisted His will might be taken away.

(F. D. Maurice, M. A.)