Note: This is Level 4 of REVELATION IN A NUTSHELL where we explain the Sinaite perspective on knowledge of God. The scripture verses quoted here are from ArtScroll Tanakh [AST] and His Name Tanakh/Benmara, hearoyisrael.net [HNT].
GOD’s domain, HIS realm—-Man cannot ever know all that exist on this level, it is simply beyond man’s limited thinking, alien to man’s finiteness, beyond human comprehension.
GOD is infinite, all superlatives apply to Him, man cannot even begin to imagine what GOD is truly like. Isaiah 40:9-31—[AST]
Ascend upon a high mountain, O herald of Zion; raise your voice with strength, O herald of Jerusalem! Raise it, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’ Behold, my Lord, [YHWH]/ELOHIM, will come with [a] strong [arm], and His arm will dominate for Him; behold, His reward is with Him and His wage is before Him. [He is] like a shepherd who grazes his flock, who gathers the lambs in his arm, who carries them in his bosom, who guides the nursing ewes.
Who measured the waters in His palm, gauged the Heavens with a span, measured in a huge vessel the dust of the earth, and weighed mountains with a scale and hills with a balance? Who can appraise the spirit of [YHWH], His man of counsel who informs Him? From whom did He seek counsel? [Who] gave Him insight? [Who] explained the way of knowledge to Him? Behold, all the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are reckoned like the dust rubbing off a scale; behold, He will cast away the islands like dust. The Lebanon is insufficient kindling, and its beasts are insufficient elevation-offerings. All the nations are like nothing before Him; as nothingness and emptiness are they reckoned by Him.
To whom can you liken God, and what likeness can you attribute to Him? the idol cast by a blacksmith, [which] a goldsmith overlays with gold and a silversmith with silver chains? The poor man [makes a] selection; he chooses wood that will not rot, he seeks for himself a wise woodworker to prepare an idol that will not fall apart. Do you not realize? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not contemplated the foundations of the earth? It is He Who sits on the circumference of the earth, with its inhabitants like grasshoppers; Who spreads the heavens like a thin curtain, and stretches them like a tent to dwell in. Who turns governors into nothingness; Who makes judges of the land into naught — as if they were not even planted, as if they were not even sown, as if their stock was not even rooted in the ground; even if He were to blow on them they would wither, and a storm wind would carry them away like stubble. To whom can you liken Me that I should be [his] equal?’ says the Holy One. Raise your eyes on high and see Who created these [things]! He brings forth their legions by number; He calls to each of them by name; by the abundance of His power and by vigor of His strength, not one is missing!
Why do you say, O Jacob, and declare, O Israel,—‘My way is hidden from [YHWH] and my cause has passed by my God’? Did you not know? Did you not hear? [YHWH] is the eternal God, the Creator of the ends of the earth; He does not weary, He does not tire; there is no calculating His understanding. He gives strength to the weary, and grants abundant might to the powerless. Youths may weary and tire and young men may constantly falter, but those whose hope is in [YHWH] will have renewed strength; they will grow a wing, like eagles; they will run and not grow tired, they will walk and not grow weary.
It is man’s folly to try to put GOD in a ‘religious box’—
- to confine HIM—Isaiah 46:5 To Whom can you liken Me, or consider equal, or compare Me that we should seem alike?
- try to define HIM,
- put boundaries that limit HIM,
- and make conclusions that we have HIM figured out.
- Isaiah 55:8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not My ways . . . As high as the heavens over the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
- Unless GOD reveals to man what is on this level, man cannot ever know.—Job 38:1-2 [YHWH] then responded to Job fro out of the whirlwind, and said: Who is this who gives murky counsel, with words without knowledge? Gird your loins like a warrior, and I will ask you, and you will inform Me. where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell, if you know understanding?
- Thankfully, GOD does indeed care that mankind would know HIM—
- Who HE is —Ex. 20:2-7 [AST] I am [YHWH], your God, Who has taken you out of the land of Eqypt from the house of slavery. You shall not recognize the gods of others in My presence.
- What NAME HE should be known by —Ex. 3:13-15 [HNT]
13. And Mosheh said to the ‘Elohiym: behold, when I come to the sons of Yisra’el, and will say to them: the ‘Elohiym of your fathers has sent me to you; and they will say to me, what is His name? What will I say to them?
14. And ‘Elohiym said to Mosheh: אהיה אשר אהיה ‘Ehyeh ‘Asher ‘Ehyeh [To Be As I Choose To Be]. And He said: This you will say to the sons of Yisra’el, אהיה ‘Ehyeh [I Will Be] has sent me to you.
15. And ‘Elohiym also said to Mosheh: thus you will say to the sons of Yisra’el, “יהוה, ‘Elohiym of your fathers, ‘Elohiym of ‘Abraham, ‘Elohiym of Yitschaq, and the ‘Elohiym of Ya’aqob, has sent me to you: this is My Name forever, and this is My appellation, designation and titled memorial to all generations.”
- What HE’s like Exodus 34:6-7.14 [HNT]
5. And יהוה descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and called out His Name: יהוה.
6. And יהוה passed before his face, and called out: יהוה, יהוה mighty, compassionate and merciful, delayed to anger, and abundant in kindness and trustworthiness,
7. keeping kindness for thousands, lifting perversity, rebellion and disobedience and abrogating— but not completely; visiting the perversity of the fathers upon the sons, and upon the sons of sons, on the third and the fourth.
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13. But you will break down their altars, and burst their pillars, and you will cut down their ‘Asherahiym;
14. for you will not prostrate nor bow yourself down and respect any other strength: for יהוה, Who is jealous, zealous and protective of His Name, honor, authority and character, is an ‘El that is jealous, zealous and protective!
What HE requires of the only creature HE made in HIS IMAGE— Micah 6:8 [AST] He has told you, O man, what is good! What does [YHWH] require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?—
And endowed with free will and freedom of choice —-Deuteronomy 30:15-16 [HNT]
15. See, I have set before you this day life and right, and death and evil;
16. in that I command you this day to love יהוה your ‘Elohiym, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances that you may live and multiply, and that יהוה your ‘Elohiym may bless you in the land where you go in to possess it.
GOD condescends and makes HIMSELF known to man—- Isaiah 48:17 [AST] Thus said [YHWH] your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am [YHWH] your God, Who instructs you for [your] benefit, Who guides you in the way you should follow.
But only to the extent that man can comprehend— Isaiah 28:9-10,13 [AST] To Whom shall one teach knowledge? To whom shall one explain a message? [To] those weaned from [mother’s] milk, removed from the breasts? For it is commandment by commandment, line by line, line by line, a bit here and a bit there. . . The word of [YHWH] shall befall them commandment by
commandment, commandment by commandment, line by line, line by line, a bit here and a bit there; so that they will go and stumble backward and be broken, and be tripped up and caught.
This “KNOW ME-Package” that GOD programmed for mankind’s education about HIMSELF is given in the Sinai Revelation: the Decalogue written on two tablets of stone by the very finger of God and more instructions, statutes, laws, commandments, teachings recorded by Moses amounting to 613. Both were placed in the Ark of the Covenant according to the instructions of the LAWGIVER Himself. it is wrong to call them the “Mosaic Law” or “Law of Moses,” for Moses was merely the recording human instrument of YHWH’s TORAH.