I ended my previous post by noting that although Moses was not allowed to see God’s face, God’s people will eventually see him. I’d like to meditate further on that.
In mentioning Moses I was referring to the well-known incident at Sinai, where Moses asked to see God’s face and was denied; God instead placed him in a fissure in the rock and, as he put it, covered the fissure with his hand, removing it just so as to allow Moses to see his “back” (Ex 33.17-23).
This occurred after Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the 70 elders of Israel had gone up on Mount Sinai “and saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink” (Ex 24.9-11). Immediately after that, the others returned to the camp while Moses and Joshua went further up the mountain, “and the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. 17 And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel. 18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights” (Ex 24.16-18). During those 40 days, God gave Moses instructions about the tabernacle and the priesthood (Ex 25-31).
And because of the apparent delay, the people worshiped a golden bull idol, and Moses, returning, broke the tables of the Law in his rage (Ex 32). In the succeeding days he met with God, “face to face” (Ex 33.11), and it was here that he asked to see God’s “glory” and was denied.
But then God instructed him to return to the mountain, where “the Lord passed by before him” (Ex 34.6) and revealed himself with the classic wording that is repeated throughout Scripture. On his return from the mountain, his face “shone” so much that he covered it when he spoke with the people (Ex 34.29-35).
God revealed himself to Moses in unprecedented and spectacular ways, even as he refused to show him his “face.”
Interestingly, six centuries later the prophet Elijah had a similar experience in the same place.
He was running from Jezebel, running for his life. He hid in a cave—another sort of fissure—and the voice of God commanded him to step out and stand in the open. There “the Lord passed by” to the sound of a mighty wind, “but the Lord was not in the wind” (1K 19.11). Then followed an earthquake, and then a fire, but the Lord was not in them either. And finally, as we all know, “a still small voice” (1K 19.12)—a voice that commissioned him for his next ministry, and a significant one.
And these two men, Moses and Elijah, were summoned to a different mountain centuries later, a “high mountain” in Israel, to see the shining face of God in another way, a better way, at the Transfiguration (Mt 17.1-8). There they communed with Jesus, the Word of God, the perfect expression of the Father (He 1.3), the one who said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (Jn 14.9). They spoke face to face, discussing Jesus’ coming “exodus,” the pivotal event in the history of the world.
They saw, and they knew.
And they were safe.
As my previous post noted, we, too, shall see him, and we shall even be like him (1J 3.2). We will no longer see as now, in a mirror, dimly (1Co 13.12).
May that day soon come.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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