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Problem: Numbers 18:15–16 instructs that unclean beasts should be redeemed with money. But Exodus had commanded that they be killed. How can this discrepancy be reconciled?

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Problem: Here God declares “I will not go up in your midst.” Yet later God did go with them in a mighty and victorious way, leading them to victory under Joshua (see Josh. 1–11).

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Problem: While Moses was upon the mountain receiving the Law from God, the people were at the foot of the mountain worshiping the golden calf which they had constructed (32:4–6). When God instructed Moses to go down to them, He told Moses that He would “consume them” and make a great nation from Moses (32:10). When Moses heard this, he pleaded with God to turn from His anger. Verse 14 states, “So the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.” This implies that God changed His mind. However, in 1 Samuel 15:29 God says that “He is not a man, that He should relent,” and in Malachi 3:6 God says, “For I am the Lord, I do not change.” Also, in Hebrews, God demonstrated the “immutability of His counsel” (Heb. 6:17) by swearing an oath. Does God change His mind or doesn’t He?

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Problem: This verse says that the Ten Commandments were “written with the finger of God.” But, elsewhere the Bible insists that “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and that spirits do not have “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). How, then, can God have fingers?

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Problem: God clearly commanded in Exodus 20:4: “You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath.” Yet here Moses is instructed by God to “make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work” (v. 18). If making images of any heavenly object is wrong, then why did God command Moses to make some on the ark of the covenant?

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Problem: According to this verse, Moses and the elders “saw the God of Israel.” Yet God told Moses that he could not see God’s face (Ex. 33:20), and John states flatly that “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18).

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Problem: Exodus 24:9–11 records that Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel ascended the mountain of God and “saw the God of Israel.” However, Exodus 19:12–13 says that the people could not even touch the base of the mountain without being put to death. And in Exodus 33:20 God says that no one can see Him and live. How could these people go up the mountain and see God and yet live?

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