THE COVENANT RATIFIED. THE
VISION OF GOD.
Exodus 24
The opening words of this chapter ("Come up unto the Lord")
imply, without explicitly asserting, that Moses was first sent down
to convey to Israel the laws which had just been enacted.
This code they unanimously accepted, and he wrote it down. It is
a memorable statement, recording the origin of the first portion of
Holy Scripture that ever existed as such, whatever earlier writings
may now or afterwards have been incorporated in the Pentateuch. He
then built an altar for God, and twelve pillars for the tribes, and
sacrificed burnt-offerings and peace-offerings unto the Lord.
Sin-offerings, it will be observed, were not yet instituted; and
neither was the priesthood, so that young men slew the offerings.
Half of the blood was poured upon the altar, because God had
perfected His share in the covenant. The remainder was not used
until the law had been read aloud, and the people had answered with
one voice, "All that the Lord hath commanded will we do, and will be
obedient." Thereupon they too were sprinkled with the blood, and the
solemn words were spoken, "Behold the blood of the covenant which
the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." The people
were now finally bound: no later covenant of the same kind will be
found in the Old Testament.
And now the principle began to work which was afterwards embodied
in the priesthood. That principle, stated broadly, was exclusion
from the presence of God, relieved and made hopeful by the admission
of representatives. The people were still forbidden to approach,
under pain of death. But Moses and Aaron were no longer the only
ones to cross the appointed boundaries. With them came the two sons
of Aaron, (afterwards, despite their privilege, to meet a dreadful
doom,) and also seventy representatives of all the newly covenanted
people. Joshua, too, as the servant of Moses, was free to come,
although unspecified in the summons (Exo 24:1, Exo 24:13).
"They saw the God of Israel," and under His feet the blueness of
the sky like intense sapphire. And they were secure: they beheld
God, and ate and drank.
But in privilege itself there are degrees: Moses was called up
still higher, and left Aaron and Hur to govern the people while he
communed with his God. For six days the nation saw the flanks of the
mountain swathed in cloud, and its summit crowned with the glory of
Jehovah like devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud, and
during forty days they knew not what had become of him. Was it time
lost? Say rather that all time is wasted except what is spent in
communion, direct or indirect, with the Eternal.
The narrative is at once simple and sublime. We are sometimes
told that other religions besides our own rely for sanction upon
their supernatural origin. "Zarathustra, S
kya-Mooni
and Mahomed pass among their followers for envoys of the Godhead;
and in the estimation of the Brahmin the Vedas and the laws of Manou
are holy, divine books" (Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. 6).
This is true. But there is a wide difference between nations which
assert that God privately appeared to their teachers, and a nation
which asserts that God appeared to the public. It is not upon the
word of Moses that Israel is said to have believed; and even those
who reject the narrative are not entitled to confound it with
narratives utterly dissimilar. There is not to be found anywhere a
parallel for this majestic story.
But what are we to think of the assertion that God was seen to
stand upon a burning mountain?
He it is Whom no man hath seen or can see, and in His presence
the seraphim veil their faces.
It will not suffice to answer that Moses "endured as seeing Him
that is invisible" (Heb 11:27), for the paraphrase is many centuries
later, and hostile critics will rule it out of court as an
after-thought. At least, however, it proves that the problem was
faced long ago, and tells us what solution satisfied the early
Church.
With this clue before us, we ask what notion did the narrative
really convey to its ancient readers? If our defence is to be
thoroughly satisfactory, it must show an escape from heretical and
carnal notions of deity, not only for ourselves, but also for
careful readers from the very first.
Now it is certain that no such reader could for one moment think
of a manifestation thorough, exhaustive, such as the eye receives of
colour and of form. Because the effect produced is not satisfaction,
but desire. Each new vision deepens the sense of the unseen. Thus we
read first that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy
elders, saw God, from which revelation the people felt and knew
themselves to be excluded. And yet the multitude also had a vision
according to its power to see; and indeed it was more satisfying to
them than was the most profound insight enjoyed by Moses. To see God
is to sail to the horizon: when you arrive, the horizon is as far in
front as ever; but you have gained a new consciousness of
infinitude. "The appearance of the glory of the Lord was seen like
devouring fire in the eyes of the children of Israel" (Exo 24:17).
But Moses was aware of a glory far greater and more spiritual than
any material splendour. When theophanies had done their utmost, his
longing was still unslaked, and he cried out, "Show me, I pray Thee,
Thy glory" (Exo 33:18). To his consciousness that glory was still
veiled, which the multitude sufficiently beheld in the flaming
mountain. And the answer which he received ought to put the question
at rest for ever, since, along with the promise "All My goodness
shall pass before thee," came the assertion "Thou shalt not see My
face, for no man shall see Me and live."
So, then, it is not our modern theology, but this noble book of
Exodus itself, which tells us that Moses did not and could not
adequately see God, however great and sacred the vision which he
beheld. From this book we learn that, side by side with the most
intimate communion and the clearest possible unveiling of God, grew
up the profound consciousness that only some attributes and not the
essence of deity had been displayed.
It is very instructive also to observe the steps by which Moses
is led upward. From the burning bush to the fiery cloud, and thence
to the blazing mountain, there was an ever-deepening lesson of
majesty and awe. But in answer to the prayer that he might really
see the very glory of his Lord, his mind is led away upon entirely
another pathway: it is "All My goodness" which is now to "pass
before" him, and the proclamation is of "a God full of compassion
and gracious," yet retaining His moral firmness, so that He "will by
no means clear the guilty."
What can cloud and fire avail, toward the manifesting of a God
Whose essence is His love? It is from the Old Testament narrative
that the New Testament inferred that Moses endured as seeing indeed,
yet as seeing Him Who is inevitably and for ever invisible to eyes
of flesh: he learned most, not when he beheld some form of awe,
standing on a paved work of sapphire stone and as it were the very
heaven for clearness, but when hidden in a cleft of the rock and
covered by the hand of God while He passed by.
On one hand the people saw the glory of God: on the other hand it
was the best lesson taught by a far closer access, still to pray and
yearn to see that glory. The seventy beheld the God of Israel: for
their leader was reserved the more exalting knowledge, that beyond
all vision is the mystic overshadowing of the Divine, and a voice
which says "No man shall see Me and live." The difference in heart
is well typified in this difference in their conduct, that they saw
God and ate and drank, but he, for forty days, ate not. Satisfaction
and assurance are a poor ideal compared with rapt aspiration and
desire.
Thus we see that no conflict exists between this declaration and
our belief in the spirituality of God.
We have still to ask what is the real force of the assertion that
God was in some lesser sense seen of Israel, and again, more
especially, of its leaders.
What do we mean even by saying that we see each other?--that,
observing keenly, we see upon one face cunning, upon another sorrow,
upon a third the peace of God? Are not these emotions immaterial and
invisible as the essence of God Himself? Nay, so invisible is the
reality within each bosom, that some day all that eye hath seen
shall fall away from us, and yet the true man shall remain intact.
Man has never seen more than a hint, an outcome, a partial
self-revelation or self-betrayal of his fellow-man.
"Yes, in the sea of life
in-isled,
With echoing straits between us
thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery
wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
God bade betwixt 'our' shores
to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging
sea."
And yet, incredible as the paradox would seem, if it were not too
common to be strange, the play of muscles and rush of blood, visible
through the skin, do reveal the most spiritual and immaterial
changes. Even so the heavens declare that very glory of God which
baffled the undimmed eyes of Moses. So it was, also, that when
rended rocks and burning skies revealed a more immanent action of
Him Who moves through all nature always, when convulsions hitherto
undreamed of by those dwellers in Egyptian plains overwhelmed them
with a new sense of their own smallness and a supreme Presence, God
was manifested there.
Not unlike this is the explanation of St. Augustine, "We need not
be surprised that God, invisible as He is, appeared visibly to the
patriarchs. For, as the sound which communicates the thought
conceived in the silence of the mind is not the thought itself, so
the form by which God, invisible in His own nature, became visible,
was not God Himself. Nevertheless it was He Himself Who was seen
under that form, as the thought itself is heard in the sound of the
voice; and the patriarchs recognised that, although the bodily form
was not God, they saw the invisible God. For, though Moses was
conversing with God, yet he said, 'If I have found grace in Thy
sight, show me Thyself'" (De Civ. Dei, x. 13). And again: "He
knew that he saw corporeally, but he sought the true vision of God
spiritually" (De Trin., ii. 27).
It has still to be added that His manifestation is exactly suited
to the stage now reached in the education of Israel. Their fathers
had already "seen God" in the likeness of man: Abraham had
entertained Him; Jacob had wrestled with Him. And so Joshua before
Ai, and Manoah by the rock at Zorah, and Ezekiel by the river Chebar,
should see the likeness of a man. We who believe the doctrine of a
real Incarnation can well perceive that in these passing and
mysterious glimpses God was not only revealing Himself in the way
which would best prepare humanity for His future coming in actual
manhood, but also in the way by which, meanwhile, the truest and
deepest light could be thrown upon His nature, a nature which could
hereafter perfectly manifest itself in flesh. Why, then, do not the
records of the Exodus hint at a human likeness? Why did they "behold
no similitude"? Clearly because the masses of Israel were utterly
unprepared to receive rightly such a vision. To them the likeness of
man would have meant no more than the likeness of a flying eagle or
a calf. Idolatry would have followed, but no sense of sympathy, no
consciousness of the grandeur and responsibility of being made in
the likeness of God. Anthropomorphism is a heresy, although the
Incarnation is the crowning doctrine of the faith.
But it is hard to see why the human likeness of God should exist
in Genesis and Joshua, but not in the history of the Exodus, if that
story be a post-Exilian forgery.
This is not all. The revelations of God in the desert were
connected with threats and prohibitions: the law was given by Moses;
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And with the different tone of
the message a different aspect of the speaker was to be expected.
From the blazing crags of Sinai, fenced around, the voice of a
trumpet waxing louder and louder, said "Thou shalt not!" On the
green hill by the Galil