Exodus/Shemoth 33 – "for no man can see My Face and live"

 [Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  Commentary from P&H/Pentateuch and Haftorah, ed. Dr. H.J. Hertz, added as well.  Reformatting and highlights ours.–Admin1.]

If the previous chapter was the most disturbing, this one is the most intriguing!

Imagine the Creator, the Self-revealing True Elo’hiym—

• not only prepares Moses for the most important role of mediator between Him and His chosen people;
• gives His Identifiable Name to Moses early on in their first encounter;
• backs him up with miraculous power visible and witnessed by all involved in the deliverance of the slaves from bondage; 
• then allows this handpicked mediator to plead for the yet-to-be-TORAH-transformed chosen people who still have slave mentality, still are culturally and spiritually connected to the only land they had ever known and called ‘home’ – Egypt;
• meets ‘Face-to-face’ at the Tent of Meeting while the multitude watch from a distance; 
• and finally, for the biggest favor ever granted to man, agree that Moses would get a glimpse of HIS GLORY, protected under the covering of a rock.  

Has anyone else in the TNK given this much access, privilege, special treatment? And yet this man Moses is the epitomé of the rare virtue of humility.  Someone said that when you think you are humble, most likely you’re not, because it is something others perceive in you that you are not even aware of. 

As you continue to read through this chapter, place yourself in the sandals of the person watching from a distance the meetings between Moses and YHWH at the Tent of Mow’ed.  How would you feel as Joshua guarding the tent while waiting for Moses; little did he know he would be taking over at the appointed time for a warrior-leader to lead in the conquest of the promised land.  Surely the Presence of YHWH even as theophanies of the pillar of fire and glory cloud must have been awesome, for what other God in those days and in our days has been that visible, communicative and interactive with man?

In fact these stories are so incredible that they are relegated by skeptics and unbelievers to Jewish legends, except one has to wonder: what people would put on record such a dismal national history from beginning to end in their own sacred scriptures? What people’s history is at the same time their Bible? You would think that a people as persecuted as the Jews would censor if not excise from their chronicles, such as would cause them embarrassment, shame, condemnation, particularly when their scriptures claim themselves as having been chosen as the recipients of and model for the TORAH life.  But that is both the wonder and the proof of the divine source of the Hebrew Scriptures, specifically Torah. Landless, land-given, exiled from land, conquered land, land under foreign domination, no land, back in the land shared with hostile enemies determined to threaten their national life therein . . . truly,  no other people could have survived so many drastic changes in and threats to their destiny as connected to a specific divinely set-apart piece of geography. 

We who read the Hebrew Scriptures today see the continuation of the modern state of Israel from the history of their beginnings and strivings with their Elo’hiym Whose track record so far proves He will fulfill His prophetic utterances about His chosen at the end of the age.  

Exodus/Shemoth 33

1 YHVH said to Moshe: 

Go, up from here, 

you and the people that you brought up from the land of Egypt,

to the land of which I swore to Avraham, to Yitzhak and to Yaakov, saying: 

I will give it to your seed.
2 I will send a messenger before you 

and will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite, the Hivvite and the Yevusite-,
3 to a land flowing with milk and honey.

But: I will not go up in your midst, 

for a hard-necked people are you, 

lest I destroy you on the way!
4 When the people heard this evil word 

they mourned,

no man put on his ornaments (again).
5 Now YHVH said to Moshe: 

Say to the Children of Israel:

You are a hard-necked people-

if for one moment I were to go up in your midst, 

I would destroy you! 

So now, take down your ornaments from yourselves,

that I may know what I am to do with you.
6 So the Children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Sinai on.
7 Now Moshe would take the Tent 

and pitch it for himself outside the camp, going-far from the camp.

He called it the Tent of Appointment. 

And it was, 

whoever besought YHVH

would go out to the Tent of Appointment that was outside the camp.
8 And it was:

whenever Moshe would go out to the Tent, 

all the people would rise, 

they would station themselves, each-man, at the entrance to his tent, 

and would gaze after Moshe

until he had come into the Tent.
9 And it was: 

whenever Moshe would come into the Tent,

the column of cloud would come down

and stand at the entrance to the Tent, 

and he would speak with Moshe.
10 And all the people would see 

the column of cloud

standing at the entrance to the Tent, 

and all the people would rise,

they would bow down,

each-man at the entrance to his tent.
11 And YHVH would speak to Moshe 

face to face,

as a man speaks to his neighbor.

Now when he would return to the camp,

his attendant, the lad Yehoshua,

would not depart from within the Tent.
12 Moshe said to YHVH:

See, 

you, you say to me:

Bring this people up! 

But you,

you have not let us know

whom you will send with me! 

And you,

you said:

I have known you by name,

and you have found favor in my eyes!
13 So now-

if I have, pray, found favor in your eyes,

pray let me know your ways, 

that I may (truly) know you,

in order that I may find favor in your eyes: 

See, 

this nation is indeed your people!
14 He said:

If my presence were to go (with you), would I cause you to rest-easy?
15 He said to him:

If your presence does not go,

do not bring us up from here!
16 For wherein, after all, is it to be known

that I have found favor in your eyes, 

I and your people?

Is it not (precisely) in that you go with us,

and that we are distinct, 

I and your people, 

from every people that is on the face of the soil?
17 YHVH said to Moshe:

Also this word that you have spoken, I will do,

for you have found favor in my eyes, 

and I have known you by name.
18 Then he said: 

Pray let me see your Glory!
Exodus 33:19 He said: I myself will cause all my Goodliness to pass

in front of your face, 

I will call out the name of YHVH

before your face: 

that I show-favor to whom I show-favor,

that I show-mercy to whom I show-mercy.
20 But he said:

You cannot see my face,

for no human can see me and live!
21 YHVH said:

Here is a place

next to me; 

station yourself on the rock,
22 and it shall be:

when my Glory passes by,

I will place you in the cleft of the rock

and screen you with my hand 

until I have passed by.
23 Then I will remove my hand; 

you shall see my back,

but my face shall not be seen.