“So we have Moses asking for mercy and minimizing justice. And we have Elijah speaking of justice and saying nothing of mercy. This points to a tension in the Old Testament between the mercy and the justice of God. There is an awful lot in the Old Testament of the wrath of God against the sins of his people. But there is also the theme of God’s mercy that runs through the story. And these two aspects of God’s character are in tension with one another at least from a human perspective.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra