Exodus 33:18-23

MOSES REQUESTS TO SEE GOD

"And he said, Show me, I pray thee, thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see my face and live. And Jehovah said, Behold there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passes by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by: and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

It clearly stands forth in this passage that all other appearances of God to his servants, no matter how vivid or how they were stated to have occurred, did NOT include seeing God's face. The Lord proclaimed here that such was impossible for any man to do and live. No exception to this truth would ever be made, not even for Moses!

It is also evident that, in spite of God's denial of Moses' request to see "God's glory," he was nevertheless shown more than any other person of human history was ever shown - either before or since - with a possible exception of Paul's vision in "the third heaven" (2 Corinthians 12:1-7). Certainly, "This is one of the most mysterious and solemn scenes in the entire Bible."[20] A number of scholars have attempted to answer the question of just why Moses made such a request of God, and there does not appear to be a fully satisfactory answer. Calvin thought that Moses, "Desired to cross the chasm which had been made by the apostasy of the nation."[21] It also seems to this writer that Moses was conscious of some inferiority in his mission as a mediator between God and man and that he sought to remove it by seeing God's face. This was not to be, however, because Moses, human as he was, could NOT be the perfect Mediator, that honor belongs uniquely to the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, God sufficiently encouraged Moses by what he was allowed to see that he was thereby enabled to continue as the leader of Israel.

"I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee ..." Esses, a former Jewish rabbi, now a believer, has an interesting comment on this:

"The name that God is going to proclaim is JESUS. That is the true name that Moses will call upon, because all the power in the universe is tied up in that name. YHWH, the name that the German translator translated as `Jehovah' is an unpronounceable word in the Hebrew. There is no such name as Jehovah."[22]

There are a great many things in this mysterious passage that support what Esses said here. Certainly, he is correct about Jehovah, and the same goes for Yahweh. There is a justifiable resentment which we feel against both of these corrupt renditions of a word that cannot be translated. We should return to the KJV rendition, which is "the LORD." Whatever the exact nature of this experience of Moses, "No other person in the O.T., even among the later prophets, was to be so fully drawn into the inner counsels of God."[23]

"Thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see me and live ..." As Cook said, "Moses' request could not be granted in accordance with the conditions of human existence."[24] No one ever had any trouble with this passage except the critics. Note this unbelieving sneer of Canon George Harford: "Here it would seem that the sight of Yahweh's face must inevitably bring death, as if Yahweh himself could not prevent the fatal consequence."[25] Such a remark, of course, is only a variation of the old atheistic argument that God cannot be omnipotent and all-loving at the same time, because if He were, He would destroy all evil now! We have never known a person who loved the Word of God who did not also find this statement fully satisfactory. "It may well be that to actually see God while we are in the flesh would kill us."[26] In the light of this text, that is certainly the truth, a truth confirmed throughout both Testaments. See John 1:18; 6:46; 1 Timothy 1:17, and 1 John 4:12. That the omnipotence of God should be thought of as compromised by certain things known to be "impossible" to God's various creations is a ridiculous and absurd proposition.

"I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy ..." Paul's reference to this passage in Romans 9:15 is instructive. The meaning of this in the present context seems to be God's disclaimer that God in any sense whatever OWED Moses any such favor as that which he had requested. "The sovereignty permits him to bestow His favor on whomsoever He will."[27] Moses, of course, had not EARNED such a favor, nor did he, in any sense, merit it. Yet, in keeping with God's sovereign will, He gave it to Moses. Nor is it at all to be concluded that such action on God's part was capricious, or that who Moses was, his love of God, and his love of God's people, and his faithfulness as a servant "in God's house," had nothing to do with God's favor. God's blessings throughout history have always been related to and consistent with the lives and character of those whom He blessed.

"I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by ..." This text has entered the hymnology of the Christian faith in a remarkable manner. That it should have done so stems from the truth that, "He that hath seen me (Christ) hath seen the Father" (John 14:9), thus directly relating what occurs in the Christian's beholding God in Christ to Moses' desire of seeing God in this passage. First, there is Toplady's great hymn, "Rock of Ages":

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,Let me hide myself in Thee.[28]

Grace hath hid me safe in thee.

And then, there is Fanny J. Crosby's classic hymn, "A Wonderful Saviour":

A wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord, A wonderful Saviour to me.

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, And covers me there with his hand.[29]

The spiritual insight that discovers our Lord Jesus Christ in this amazing episode is altogether correct.

We shall conclude this study with the following observation from Wilbur Fields, the great Christian Church scholar of Joplin, Missouri. While admitting the correct designation of references to God's "hand," "face," etc. as anthropomorphisms, he added:

"However, we must remember that we cannot improve upon the description of the event that is given. It is easy to explain away the specific reality of the event by trying to explain it abstractly. It is better to have the child-like faith that visualizes Moses in the cleft of the rock, covered by the hand of God, than to utter abstractions that make God unreal."[30]