Exodus 32:34

Lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken — i.e., continue their leader until Palestine is reached. (See Exodus 3:8; Exodus 3:17; Exodus 6:4, &c.)

Mine Angel shall go before thee. — So far as the form of the expression goes, the promise is, as nearly as possible, a repetition of the original one, “Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared” (Exodus 23:20). But the meaning of the promise is wholly changed, as we learn from the opening paragraph of the ensuing chapter (Exodus 33:1). The “angel” now promised as a guide is not to be God Himself (“I will not go up in the midst of thee “), but a creature, between whom and God the distance is immeasurable.

In the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. — All sin is followed by suffering; the sequence is inevitable. God had now consented to spare His people, and to take them back into favour; but they were not to expect that matters would be with them as if their sin had not taken place. It would still be “visited upon them” — not, indeed, by instant death, but still in some way or other. The weary waiting in the wilderness for forty years may have been a part of the punishment (Numbers 14:33); but it may also have been inflicted on different persons in many different ways.