Passage

Exodus 34.6-7

"Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, 'The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.'" (Exodus 34:6-7, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"4. And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone. 5. And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah."

"6. And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth; 7. keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation."

"8. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. 9. And he said, If now I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance." (Exodus 34:4-9, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"4. He chiseled two tablets of stone like the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up to Mount Sinai, as Yahweh had commanded him, and took in his hand two stone tablets. 5. Yahweh descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed Yahweh’s name."

"6. Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, 7. keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”"

"8. Moses hurried and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. 9. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go among us; although this is a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”" (Exodus 34:4-9, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"4. And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. 5. And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD."

"6. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

"8. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. 9. And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance." (Exodus 34:4-9, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"4. And he heweth two tables of stone like the first, and Moses riseth early in the morning, and goeth up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah commanded him, and he taketh in his hand two tables of stone. 5. And Jehovah cometh down in a cloud, and stationeth Himself with him there, and calleth in the Name of Jehovah,"

"6. and Jehovah passeth over before his face, and calleth: 'Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness and truth, 7. keeping kindness for thousands, taking away iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and not entirely acquitting, charging iniquity of fathers on children, and on children's children, on a third [generation], and on a fourth.'"

"8. And Moses hasteth, and boweth to the earth, and doth obeisance, 9. and saith, 'If, I pray Thee, I have found grace in Thine eyes, O my Lord, let my Lord, I pray Thee, go in our midst (for it [is] a stiff-necked people), and thou hast forgiven our iniquity and our sin, and hast inherited us.'" (Exodus 34:4-9, YLT)

Exodus 34:6-7 is the OT's load-bearing self-revelation of God's character and the most quoted text within the OT itself, echoed at least seven times across the Hebrew Bible. In Jewish tradition this passage names the thirteen attributes of mercy, recited liturgically on the High Holy Days. The revelation comes in the immediate aftermath of the golden-calf apostasy (Ex 32): Israel has just broken the covenant Moses is about to receive afresh, and the first thing God reveals about Himself is His mercy. The structure is deliberately asymmetric, three full clauses of compassion, one clause of judgment, and that asymmetry is the theological move. The verses ground every biblical claim about divine love, covenant fidelity, and slowness to anger, and they ground the apologetic reply to the "OT God is wrathful" caricature.

Setting

Speaker: YHWH Himself; Moses is the witness and recorder
Audience: Moses immediately; through Moses, the covenant community of Israel
Location: Mount Sinai (Horeb), in the cleft of the rock where YHWH places Moses (Ex 33:21-23)
Time period: events c. 1446 BC (early-date Exodus) or c. 1260 BC (late-date Exodus); composed traditionally by Moses in the wilderness wandering, c. 1446-1406 BC

Theological reading

The literary placement is everything. Moses has just shattered the first set of tablets (Ex 32:19), interceded for an apostate Israel (32:11-14), pleaded "show me your glory" (33:18), and been told he may see God's back but not His face (33:20-23). Now God passes by (34:6, same verb-root as in 12:23, the Passover) and proclaims His own Name. This is the OT's clearest analogue to John 1:18 ("no one has seen God; the only-begotten has made Him known"): the climax of divine self-revelation under the old covenant is auditory, not visual, and the content is moral character before metaphysical attribute.

The proclamation is a chiastic asymmetry. Eight clauses, weighted toward mercy:

YHWH, YHWH (the covenant Name doubled, intensifying)
God (El), covenant-keeping deity
compassionate (rachum), womb-love
gracious (channun), unmerited favor
slow to anger (erek appayim), long-faced, not short-fused
abounding in lovingkindness (chesed), covenant loyalty
and truth (emet), reliability, fidelity
keeping lovingkindness for thousands (chesed la-alaphim)
forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin (the three Hebrew sin-words covering the full range)
yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished
visiting iniquity to the third and fourth generation

The third-and-fourth-generation clause is famously read as restating the second commandment (Ex 20:5) and is the apologetic flashpoint, does God punish children for their parents' sins? The OT's own answer (Ezek 18, Jer 31:29-30) is no: each person dies for their own sin. The "visiting" language names the natural intergenerational consequences of covenant-breaking rather than transferred guilt. ris3n's Inherited Guilt and Visiting Iniquity Objection Defeater develops this with the equivocation-defeater pattern.

Scholarly debate: (a) source critics (Wellhausen forward) split 34:6-7 across J and P sources; conservative scholarship reads it as a literary unity belonging to the Sinai narrative as it stands. (b) Jewish tradition counts the attributes as 13 (treating "YHWH, YHWH" as two and various nouns separately); Christian readings typically treat them as a single character-portrait with mercy and justice in tension-and-balance. (c) The relation of the asymmetric "thousands" (alaphim) to "third and fourth", most read this as ratio: covenant love runs a thousand generations deep, judgment four; mercy outruns wrath by orders of magnitude.

Apologetic significance is enormous. Every NT reuse of these phrases assumes the OT God is the God of mercy. The seven inner-OT reuses (Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2) function as a creedal echo. Jonah famously quotes it in 4:2 as the reason he fled, he knew God would relent. The verse is one of the strongest internal-OT rebuttals to the Marcionite / New Atheist contrast between an angry OT God and a loving NT Jesus.

Key words

H3068 - YHWH, the Tetragrammaton, the covenant Name proclaimed; the verse is literally God speaking His own Name.
H2617 - hesed, chesed, "lovingkindness, covenant loyalty." Untranslatable in one word; closer to "loyal love that exceeds obligation."
H0571 - emet, emet, "truth, faithfulness, reliability." Often paired with chesed as a covenantal hendiadys.

Theological themes

Mercy as primary self-disclosure. When God names Himself, mercy comes first; justice is the closing clause, not the leading one.
Asymmetric weighting of love and judgment. Thousands of generations of chesed vs three or four of consequences; the OT's own gloss on God's character is overwhelmingly toward love.
Covenant Name doubled. "YHWH, YHWH" is emphatic; the same God who gave the Law also reveals Himself as forgiving the Law-breakers.
Inner-OT creed. The passage is the OT's own quoted standard for God's character, anchoring at least seven later reuses.
Apologetic key to OT-God / NT-God continuity. Marcionite contrasts between an angry OT God and a loving NT Jesus collapse under the weight of this self-disclosure.

Cross-references

Exodus 34.6, the verse-level treatment of the opening mercy formula.
Numbers 14.18, Moses' quotation of the formula in interceding for Israel after Kadesh.
Psalms 86.15, David's prayer using the formula.
Joel 2.13, the prophetic call to repent grounded in the formula.
Jonah 4.2, Jonah's complaint citing the formula as the reason he fled.
Nehemiah 9.17, post-exilic communal confession using the formula.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.