FaceTime

Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes.  Psalm 119:135  NASB

Shine upon – An idiom, of course.  But a nice one with a long, long history.  The idiom is based on the verb ʾôr, found first is the fifth verse of Genesis.  It means “to become light, to shine.” “Light is closely related to life and happiness, which may account for the frequent comparisons between God and light. Since the ancient world often worshiped the sun, God’s role as creator of light is stressed. Eventually, he will make the sun unnecessary (Isa 60:19–20).”^[1]  So if we wanted to treat this literally, we might say, “Become light toward me.”  In the ancient Near East, as I am sure you know, the visible favor of a king’s nod in your direction had enormous consequences.  Esther’s story is but one example. Moreover, even today we commonly look at the face to determine approval, acceptance, or rejection.  Since a large majority of human communication is corporal, not aural, it makes sense to have idioms that involve “face time.”  Nothing could be truer in the oral cultures of the psalmist’s generation.

But what about us?  We live in the print/digital age.  Most of the faces we see are pixel representations of some far away personality.  Even when we attend a “live” encounter, we’re likely to see the face of our hero or heroine projected on the 50 foot screen while we sit half a mile from the stage.  Our encounter with God is just as remote.  Black and white text, choreographed music, PowerPoint sermons, the age of personal encounter recedes into the printed history books.  And no wonder.  Personal, body-conscious, in-your-face connections are risky, frightening, and unpredictable.  Actually, they were all those things in the tenth century B.C.E. too, but there wasn’t any choice to change the channel.  Maybe that’s why we (and the Israelites at Sinai) prefer to have someone else handle the direct contact.  Just give us the handbook, which, by the way, we can conveniently put on the shelf when it’s just too much to deal with.  I wonder if we really want God to shine His face upon us.  That kind of light reveals everything, and most of us have a lot stuffed in the shadows on purpose.  The psalmist asks God to dispel those shadows.  “See all of me.  I’ve got nothing to hide.”  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to say!  This idea is echoed in other psalms.  It starts with Aaron.

In the famous priestly blessing of Num 6:25, the Hiphil stem of the verb is used in a similar context: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.” This time-honored expression occurs five times in the Psalms, invoking God’s saving and restoring presence on behalf of his servants.^[2]

In the end that’s what we need.  Face to face blessing, care, and safety.  Those dark corners never made us feel alive.  They gave us nothing but fear.  Don’t you find it amazingly ironic that we still resist stepping into the light of the God who knows us better than we know ourselves?

Topical Index: light, shine, ʾôr, acceptance, face, Psalm 119:135

^[1] Wolf, H. (1999). 52 אוֹר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 25). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.