Exodus 33:12–23 (ESV) —
12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
NOTE: Moses prays /argues that God's presence must go with them. God answers by agreeing that his presence will go with him (Moses). The passage is confusing because God says that he can't go with Israel, because he will destroy the nation because of their sin. But he does agree to go with Moses. Did he agree to go with the people too? I'm not sure. Certainly, prayer can change the perceived direction that God has verbally said. God wants us to pray and will "change" direction according to prayer. The other possibility, is that God gave Moses the Holy Spirit. His Spirit would rest on many others but not all people during the Old Testament times. Just like today, the HS resides in us, even as we walk among a godless and sinful culture.
Moses also pleads for a greater revelation of God to himself. God puts him a cleft of a rock and passes by, allowing him to see his back. This is all clearly symbolic (in a sense) since God is spirit, but God revealed the same thing to Elijah. In that case (Elijah's), the real presence of God was the still small voice. God is not seen in the noise of mighty things, but is revealed in how his word changes us. Moses technically didn't see much of anything. He just heard his glory pass by, until the end. Idiomatically in Hebrew, to see the back of someone is to see nothing. And the anthropomorphisms are there to describe something that can't be described in any other sense. God does not have a huge hand, but God's "hand" prevented Moses from being blinded / destroyed probably by the amazing glory of the God of the universe. Going back in the discussion, Moses didn't see anything because he couldn't, but he heard God speak, and God's word is where we meet God for real.
PONDER:
- Have we seen God in his word? You really can't unless you spend time daily in it
PRAYER: Lord, open our eyes to truth. The enemy has blinded us be denying the clear truths in your word so that we might never see or know you. Please take off the scales, and help people to see the truth. And for believers, may we stop arguing in human arguments but use your word in our discussions with others.
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