• “Who Has Come to Know the Mind of Jehovah?”
    The Watchtower—2010 | October 15

    • 13. How does gaining insight into Jesus’ way of thinking help us?

      13 Gaining insight into Jesus’ way of thinking helps us in understanding passages in the Scriptures that may be difficult to grasp. For example, consider Jehovah’s words to Moses after the Israelites had made a golden calf to worship. God said: “I have looked at this people and here it is a stiff-necked people. So now let me be, that my anger may blaze against them and I may exterminate them, and let me make you into a great nation.”​—Ex. 32:9, 10.

      14. How did Moses react to Jehovah’s words?

      14 The account goes on to say: “Moses proceeded to soften the face of Jehovah his God and to say: ‘Why, O Jehovah, should your anger blaze against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “With evil intent he brought them out in order to kill them among the mountains and to exterminate them from the surface of the ground”? Turn from your burning anger and feel regret over the evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel your servants, to whom you swore by yourself, in that you said to them, “I shall multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I have designated I shall give to your seed, that they may indeed take possession of it to time indefinite.”’ And Jehovah began to feel regret over the evil that he had spoken of doing to his people.”​—Ex. 32:11-14.a

      15, 16. (a) What opportunity opened up to Moses because of what Jehovah said? (b) In what sense did Jehovah “feel regret”?

      15 Did Moses really need to correct Jehovah’s thinking? By no means! Although Jehovah expressed what he was inclined to do, this was not his final judgment. In effect, Jehovah was here testing Moses, just as Jesus later did Philip and the Greek woman. Moses was given an opportunity to express his view.b Jehovah had appointed Moses as mediator between Israel and Himself, and Jehovah respected His appointment of Moses to that role. Would Moses succumb to frustration? Would he take this opportunity to encourage Jehovah to forget about Israel and to make a mighty nation from Moses’ own descendants?