Necessarily Hidden

He further said, “You cannot see My face, for mankind shall not see Me and live!” Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place ^[j]by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.  Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”  Exodus 33:20-23  NASB

In the cleft of the rock – Okay, we can’t see the face of God and live.  Got it!  But doesn’t that imply that God has some physical form, even if it’s just blinding, lethal light?  If God doesn’t have any physical form, then what’s the problem with “face”?  For that matter, what’s the meaning of “My hand” for an incorporeal being?  Or back? (but we know that this is a metaphor).  Why hide Moses?  Maybe all of this is a translation issue.

Here’s the translation of Aryeh Kaplan:

“When My glory passes by, I will place you in a crevice in the mountain, protecting you with My power until I pass by.  I will then remove My protective cover and you will have a vision of what follows from My existence.  My existence itself, however, will not be seen.”[1]

Perhaps a bit more understandable.  “My hand” is a metaphor for God’s power and we could think of this as some kind of force field.  “Vision” is much better than “My back,” as we have argued long ago (https://skipmoen.com/2018/03/future-history/) and more recently (https://skipmoen.com/2026/01/revealing-god/). 

Robert Alter’s comment might help:

“‘you will see My back, but My face will not be seen.’  Volumes of theology have been spun out of these enigmatic words.  Imagining the deity in frankly physical terms was entirely natural for the ancient monotheists: this God had, or at least could assume, a concrete manifestation which had a front and rear, face and back, and that face man was forbidden to see.  But such concreteness does not imply conceptual naïveté.  Through it the Hebrew writer suggests an idea that makes good sense from later theological perspectives: that God’s intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps also intolerable, to the finite mind of man, but that something of His attributes—His ‘goodness,’ the directional pitch of His ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of His presence—can be glimpsed by humankind.”[2]

Nahum Sarna provides another helpful insight:

“My back.  This daring anthropomorphism is conditioned by the contrasting repeated use of panim, ‘face, presence.’  Here the term means the traces of His presence, the afterglow of His supernatural effulgence.”[3]

Sarna provides important remarks about the idea of God’s goodness passing before Moses: “Nowhere else in the Bible does this familiar formula appear with God as the subject of the action.”[4]  He points out that the “attributes” God provides in His self-revelation are those found in Exodus 34:6-7.  They are all actions, not essence, echoing Heschel’s insight that the Bible never provides us with any statement about the essence of God’s existence but rather only the dynamic interactions of God with His creation.  The Bible is not a Greek philosophy book.

All of this might help us understand a little about this strange passage in Exodus.  If we take seriously Alter’s comment about ancient religious views, we can see how the text, written for ancient people, might use corporeal metaphors to speak about the presence of the divine.  But we should also pay attention to Kaplan’s translation of “vision” rather than “glory.”  It’s difficult to imagine what it would mean to experience God’s glory, certainly something that apparently no human being can survive; but “vision” is understandable.  In fact, there are a significant number of examples of human beings experiencing visions from God.  Finally, as I have pointed out in other studies (see above), there is no reason to translate ʾaḥărît as “back.”  Harris comments that “As is clear from other derivatives, the general meaning of the root is after, later, behind, following. H. W. Wolff has likened the Hebrew conception of time to the view a man has when he is rowing a boat. He sees where he has been and backs into the future.”^[5]  It is not a term for some body part, not even as a metaphor.  It is a term about time, past or future.  I believe that this supports the idea that God showed Moses a glimpse of His intentions for Israel in the future.  Moses did not see the essence of God.  He saw what God was proposing to do.  Why the future?  Because to see “behind” God is to see what will be, just as the man in the row boat can’t see what’s behind him as he rows toward his goal, unless he turns around to face it.

Now, perhaps, we can understand why Moses needed to be shielded from this “vision.”  How many of us, knowing what will come to pass, wouldn’t use that information to alter our present behavior?  How many of us wouldn’t like to have a “time machine” to jump ahead and see what will occur so we can take advantage of circumstances now?  Such information is dangerous, very dangerous.  Why?  Because it fossilizes our reality now.  It obliterates the necessity of contingency in the practice of free choice.  It removes the need for faith.  To know is not to trust.  So, Moses sees something, some glimpse of God’s plans, but not all.  He’s protected from that unbearable lightness of being—so that he can be free to choose. 

Topical Index:  ʾaḥărît, after, future, behind, Wolff, vision, choice, Exodus 33:20-23