Exodus 32:13

13 Remember Avraham, Yitz'chak and Isra'el, your servants, to whom you swore by your very self. You promised them, 'I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky; and I will give all this land I have spoken about to your descendants; and they will possess it forever.'"

Exodus 32:13 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 32:13

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants
The covenant he made with them, the promise he had made unto them, with an oath annexed to it:

to whom thou swarest by thine own self;
which he did, because he could swear by no greater; and for the confirmation of his covenant and promise, see ( Genesis 22:16 )

and saidst unto them;
for what was said to Abraham was repeated and confirmed to Isaac and Jacob:

I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven;
multitudes of which are out of sight, and cannot be seen with the naked eye, nor numbered:

and all this land that I have spoken of;
the land of Canaan, then inhabited by several nations:

will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever;
as long as they are a people, a body politic, and especially while obedient to the divine will; but should they be now cut off, this promise would become of no effect: this is the great argument Moses makes use of, and the most forcible one.

Exodus 32:13 In-Context

11 Moshe pleaded with ADONAI his God. He said, "ADONAI, why must your anger blaze against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand?

12 Why let the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intentions that he led them out, to slaughter them in the hills and wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger! Relent! Don't bring such disaster on your people!

13 Remember Avraham, Yitz'chak and Isra'el, your servants, to whom you swore by your very self. You promised them, 'I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky; and I will give all this land I have spoken about to your descendants; and they will possess it forever.'"

14 ADONAI then changed his mind about the disaster he had planned for his people.

15 Moshe turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets inscribed on both sides, on the front and on the back.