Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

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contract with the avot?
בלה תובשחמ
While God will fulfill His contractual obligation, He makes it clear that He has no
intention of maintaining His relationship with Am Yisrael. “My angel will travel
before you…” (32:34), “I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the
Canaanite… but I will not travel in your midst, for you are a stubborn nation –
lest I destroy you on the way.” (33:2-3)
It is this that causes the nation to mourn. They realize that God will not back out
of his contract with the avot, but He will fulfill His technical obligations and no
more. He will ensure that Am Yisrael arrives safely in Eretz Yisrael and that we
prosper there, but that’s all. No more relationship.
Moshe then challenges God: “You have told me to bring this nation [to Canaan]
but You haven’t told me whom You will send with me…” (33:12). Fascinatingly,
Moshe refuses to accept God’s last declaration. Hashem had said clearly, “My angel
will travel before you…” and Moshe acts as if those words had been struck from
the record. God agrees to this new challenge: “My Presence will travel…”(33:14).
Moshe reiterates his challenge: “If Your Presence will not travel, do not cause us
to travel from here” (33:15).
We must reflect on the intensity of Moshe’s challenge: He knows that God is, as
it were, in a bind. He is committed to fulfilling his contractual obligations to the
avot, so He must lead Am Yisrael to Eretz Yisrael. But He wants nothing more
to do with them. But Moshe now insists that they will not leave Har Sinai, and
therefore will not cooperate in fulfilling Hashem’s promise to the avot, unless He
agrees to return to their relationship. It is this ultimatum that Hashem concedes
to, and that facilitates the reconciliation. It is this return to relationship that is
symbolized, according to Rashi, in the building of the mishkan.
The result of Moshe’s challenge is that God’s relationship to Am Yisrael rests
on two separate covenants – a) brit avot—His irrevocable promise to Avraham,
Yitzchak, and Yaakov that we would be numerous and inherit Eretz Yisrael