After the calf, God makes an announcement that is almost worse than punishment. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, preserves the full weight of the line.
"I will bring you to the land producing milk and honey. For the Shekhinah of My Glory cannot go up among you, nor My Majesty dwell in the habitation of their camp, because you are a hard-necked people, lest I destroy you in the way" (Exodus 33:3).
The bargain is brutal. You can still have the land. You just cannot have Me with you. I will send an angel. You will arrive. The milk and honey will be there. But the Shekhinah, the indwelling Presence that has traveled with you since Egypt, will not go.
The Targum gives the reason and the mercy in the same breath. Israel is stiff-necked, am kashei oref. If the full Presence traveled in their camp, their next failure would cost them their lives. God is withdrawing not out of wrath but out of protection. Proximity to the Shekhinah, for a people who keep slipping, is dangerous.
This is when the mourning begins. The people would rather have God's dangerous closeness than His safe distance. And that choice is what sets up everything that follows in chapter 33 - Moses' audacious negotiation to bring the Presence back.
Takeaway: Sometimes God's distance is mercy, not abandonment. And sometimes love means demanding back the proximity that will cost you.