What-is-God-like
Short answer: The most direct answer to what God is like comes from God himself. When Moses asked to see God's glory, God passed before him and proclaimed his own name and character: Yahweh, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness and truth. That self-description in Exodus 34:6-7 becomes a refrain repeated throughout Scripture, from Psalm 103 to the prophets. It tells us God is not a vague force but a personal being with a settled moral character. He is spirit, not a body. He is holy and utterly set apart. He is love in his very nature. He is eternal, unwearying, and beyond full comprehension. Everything else Scripture says about God fits within these bounds: he is knowable because he has chosen to make himself known, yet never exhaustible by human understanding.
God names himself before Moses
The setting matters. Moses is on Mount Sinai after the golden calf incident. Israel has just committed flagrant idolatry, and God has every reason to withdraw. Instead, Moses asks to see God's glory, and God answers by proclaiming his own name. Exodus 34:6-7 begins, Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, followed by the words that become Israel's most quoted description of God.
Notice the order. God does not first declare his power or his wrath. He declares his mercy and grace. He describes himself as slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and truth. These are not adjectives tacked onto a distant deity; they are God's own testimony about his own character, spoken in the hearing of a man who had just interceded for a rebellious people.
This is God's self-revelation, not human speculation. Moses does not construct a picture of God from philosophy or from nature alone. He receives it. The foundation for knowing what God is like is that God has spoken, and he has spoken most clearly about himself.
Merciful, gracious, slow to anger
The Hebrew words behind merciful and gracious carry concrete weight. Mercy speaks of a deep compassion that moves a person to act for the suffering. Grace speaks of favour freely given, not earned. Together they describe a God whose first posture toward his people is not resentment but kindness. He is not reluctantly tolerant; he is by nature generous.
Slow to anger is equally specific. It does not mean God never becomes angry. Scripture speaks often of God's wrath against sin. It means God is patient, not quick to erupt, giving time for repentance. Psalm 103:8-14 echoes this exact language and applies it to ordinary people: Yahweh is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness.
This patience is not indifference. A God who never cared about evil would not be loving. His slowness to anger is the space in which repentance is possible, and it is one of the reasons his goodness is meant to lead people to change rather than to presumption.
Abundant in loving kindness and truth
The phrase abundant in loving kindness and truth pairs two ideas that we often separate. Loving kindness translates a Hebrew word for covenant loyalty, the steadfast love that keeps its promises. Truth carries the sense of faithfulness and reliability. God is not merely affectionate; he is dependable. His love and his honesty hold together.
That combination matters because it rules out two distortions. A God who is only loving, without truth, becomes a vague endorsement of whatever we already want. A God who is only truth, without love, becomes cold and crushing. Exodus 34:6-7 holds them together: God is both relentlessly truthful and relentlessly kind.
Psalm 103 goes on to describe the height and depth of this love and to remind readers that God remembers we are dust. The God of the universe is not indifferent to human frailty. He is the kind of God whose greatness does not make him remote but makes his condescension to us more striking.
God is spirit, holy, and love
What God is like cannot be reduced to one attribute. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman in John 4:24 that God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. This means God is not confined to a location, a building, or a physical form. Worship of him is therefore not about geography but about the posture of the heart.
At the same time, Scripture never lets us soften God into mere benevolence. Revelation 4:8 records the ceaseless cry of the living creatures: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. The triple repetition is a Hebraic way of declaring absolute holiness. God is utterly set apart, morally pure, and majestic beyond comparison.
And 1 John 4:8 states plainly that God is love. Holiness and love are not rivals in God. His love is a holy love, and his holiness is not the opposite of love but the condition for it. A God who tolerated everything would not be good; a God who loved nothing would not be God.
Eternal, unwearying, and beyond our comprehension
Isaiah 40:28-31 presents God as the everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who doesn't faint and isn't weary, whose understanding is unsearchable. This is a corrective to every picture of God as a slightly larger version of us. He does not tire. He does not run out of attention. He does not need to be refreshed.
The same passage promises that those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength. The point is contrast: God's inexhaustible strength becomes the supply for human weakness. His unsearchable understanding means we will never fully map him out, and that is a reason for trust rather than frustration.
Honesty requires saying that Christians have differed over how to describe the relationship between God's attributes and how predestination, foreknowledge, and human freedom fit together. Scripture is clear that God is merciful, gracious, holy, and sovereign. How those truths are systematically arranged is a place where faithful believers have disagreed, and it is wiser to say so than to pretend otherwise.
Why God's self-description matters for daily life
If God is who Exodus 34:6-7 says he is, then several practical things follow. You can approach him honestly, because he is merciful and gracious rather than eager to condemn. You can trust what he says, because he is abundant in truth. You can bring your failures to him, because he is slow to anger and knows you are dust.
This also shapes how we treat other people. A person who claims to know this God but is harsh, deceitful, or unforgiving is contradicting the very character they claim to worship. The biblical writers routinely tie right belief about God to right behaviour toward neighbours, not as a way of earning standing but as its natural fruit.
Finally, knowing God is meant to be relational, not merely informational. The point of God telling Moses his name was not to supply a fact but to sustain a covenant. What God is like is revealed so that we might actually draw near to him with confidence rather than dread.
How we can know God at all
God is not fully knowable by human effort. Creation itself reveals something of his power and nature, and Scripture treats that as real but limited knowledge. The deeper knowledge comes because God chooses to disclose himself, as he did to Moses and supremely in Jesus Christ, who is the exact representation of God's being.
This means humility is the right posture. We can know God truly without knowing him exhaustively. Isaiah's phrase, his understanding is unsearchable, is not a warning to stop seeking but a guard against the illusion that we have mastered him. Theologians across history have spoken of God's incomprehensibility in this sense: fully known in what he reveals, never fully grasped in what he is.
That should produce both confidence and reverence. We can speak truly about God because he has spoken truly about himself. We cannot speak finally about him, because our words and minds are creatures' words and minds. The God of Exodus 34:6-7 is near enough to be known and great enough to be worshipped.
Biblical fidelity check
Exodus 34:6-7 establishes that God himself declared his character: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness and truth. It does not claim that God overlooks sin, and the verses that follow speak of forgiving iniquity while not clearing the guilty. It does not teach that God's mercy cancels his justice, nor that his patience is unlimited in duration. It also does not explain every attribute of God; it is a foundational self-description, not a complete systematic theology.
A common misreading is to treat this passage as if it means God is only gentle and permissive, so that any talk of judgment must be human invention. That is wrong because the same passage, the same sentence even, holds mercy and truth together and speaks of not clearing the guilty. Another misreading is to treat God's slowness to anger as proof nothing will ever be judged. Scripture consistently presents his patience as leading toward repentance, not as the abolition of accountability.
Other passages that speak to Exodus 34:6-7
Several articles on this site explore related themes. If you want to consider how creation itself testifies to God's character, read Natural revelation and what creation reveals about God: A Biblical Guide. For how trusting this God works out in daily life, see What does casting your cares on God look like in practice? A Biblical Guide. On living in relationship with him, read What does abiding in Christ look like practically? A Biblical Guide. And on reflecting his character toward others, see What does biblical discipline look like without harshness? A Biblical Guide.
Frequently asked questions
What does Exodus 34:6-7 actually tell us about God?
It records God proclaiming his own name and character to Moses: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness and truth. This is God's self-description, not Moses' guess. It becomes one of the most frequently echoed texts in the Old Testament, reappearing in psalms and prophets. It tells us God is personal, morally good, patient, and faithful to his covenant promises. It also shows he is not indifferent to sin, since the surrounding verses speak of forgiving iniquity while not clearing the guilty. The passage is the anchor for the whole biblical portrait of God's character.
If God is love, how can he also be holy and judge sin?
Scripture presents love and holiness as belonging together in God rather than competing. First John 4:8 says that God is love, while Revelation 4:8 records the creatures crying that he is holy, holy, holy. His love is a holy love, which means it is not indifferent to what destroys people. Judgment is not the opposite of love but one expression of a God who takes evil seriously. The two are held together throughout Scripture, and attempts to keep one while discarding the other always distort the biblical picture.
Can human beings really know what God is like?
Truly, yes; exhaustively, no. God has revealed himself in creation, in Scripture, and decisively in Jesus Christ, so real knowledge is possible. Yet Isaiah 40:28 describes his understanding as unsearchable, and finite creatures cannot fully contain the infinite. Christians have historically spoken of this as knowing God genuinely but never completely. That should produce confidence, because he has spoken, and humility, because we have not mastered him. Within that tension, the fullest picture we have begins with God's own words in Exodus 34:6-7.
