THE VISION OF GOD.
Exodus 34
It was when God had most graciously assured Moses of His
affection, that he ventured, in so brief a cry that it is almost a
gasp of longing, to ask, "Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory" (Exo
33:18).
We have seen how nobly this petition and the answer condemn all
anthropomorphic misunderstandings of what had already been revealed;
and also how it exemplifies the great law, that they who see most of
God, know best how much is still unrevealed. The elders saw the God
of Israel and did eat and drink: Moses was led from the bush to the
flaming top of Sinai, and thence to the tent where the pillar of
cloud was as a sentinel; but the secret remained unseen, the longing
unsatisfied, and the nearest approach to the Beatific Vision reached
by him with whom God spake face to face as with a friend, was to be
hidden in a cleft of the rock, to be aware of an awful Shadow, and
to hear the Voice of the Unseen.
It was a fit time for the proclamation which was then made. When
the people had been righteously punished and yet graciously
forgiven, the name of the Self-Existent expanded and grew
clearer,--"Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full of compassion and gracious,
slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that
will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, upon the
third and upon the fourth generation." And as Moses made haste and
bowed himself, it is affecting to hear him again pleading for that
beloved Presence which even yet he can scarce believe to be
restored, and instead of claiming any separation through his
fidelity and his honours, praying "Pardon our iniquity and our sin,
and take us for Thine inheritance" (Exo 34:10).
Thereupon the covenant is given, as if newly, but without
requiring its actual re-enactment; and certain of the former
precepts are rehearsed, chiefly such as would guard against a
relapse into idolatry when they entered the good land where God
would bestow on them prosperity and conquest.
As Moses had broken the former tablets, the task was imposed on
him of hewing out the slabs on which God renewed His awful sanction
of the Decalogue, the fundamental statutes of the nation. And they
who had failed to endure his former absence, were required to be
patient while he tarried again upon the mountain, forty days and
nights.
With his return a strange incident is connected. Unknown by
himself, the "skin of his face shone by reason of His speaking with
him," and Aaron and the people recoiled until he called to them. And
thenceforth he lived a strange and isolated life. At each new
interview the glory of his countenance was renewed, and when he
conveyed his revelation to the people, they beheld the lofty
sanction, the light of God upon his face. Then he veiled his face
until next he approached his God, so that none might see what
changes came there, and whether--as St. Paul seems to teach us--the
lustre gradually waned.
His revelation, the apostle argues, was like this occasional and
fading gleam, while the moral glory of the Christian system has no
concealments: it uses great frankness; there is nothing withdrawn,
no veil upon the face. Nor is it given to one alone to behold as in
a mirror the glory of the Lord, and to share its lustre. We all,
with face unveiled, share this experience of the deliverer (2Co
3:12, 2Co 3:18).
But the incident itself is most instructive. Since he had already
spent an equal time with God, yet no such results had followed, it
seems that we receive what we are adapted to receive, not straitened
in Him but in our own capabilities; and as Moses, after his
vehemence of intercession, his sublimity of self-negation, and his
knowledge of the greater name of God, received new lustre from the
unchangeable Fountain of light, so does all true service and earnest
aspiration, while it approaches God, elevate and glorify humanity.
We learn also something of the exaltation of which matter is
capable. We who have seen coarse bulb and soil and rain transmuted
by the sunshine into radiance of bloom and subtlety of perfume, who
have seen plain faces illuminated from within until they were almost
angelic,--may we not hope for something great and rare for
ourselves, and the beloved who are gone, as we muse upon the
profound word, "It is raised a spiritual body"?
And again we learn that the best religious attainment is the
least self-conscious: Moses wist not that the skin of his face
shone.