WORD STUDY – SEEING HIS FACE – ראת פני

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Chaim

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Exodus 33:11: “And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

Exodus 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

This is really a problem for some people.  We read in Exodus 33:11 that God spoke to Moses face to face but then nine verses later we learn that no one can see God’s face and live.  Why did not Moses die when he spoke with God face to face?  It sounds  like a contradiction to me.  Of course there are many and varied explanations all which are just assumptions, conjectures, opinions and guesses.  Some will say Moses did not really see God’s face but only His presence which makes sense as the word for face is pani which could mean the presence of God. Some will say God made an exception in Moses’s case, others suggest that this face to face was simply an idiomatic express for speaking in a friendly, plain and cordial manner.

All these explanations are good but note in Exodus 33:11 God spoke face to face and in verse 20 it says to see the face. There is a difference between speaking and seeing. The word speak in verse 11 is debar which is really a sharing of your heart.  I can share my heart with you right now in this blog and not say a verbal word.  A deaf person can convey his heart in sign language without speaking a word.  People who speak two different languages can still communicate with their eyes and facial expressions.  So speaking face to face or pani to pani could also mean to communicate ones hearts just through experiencing one’s presence.  We communicate with God like that all the time.  I spent almost two hours in prayer yesterday feeling the presence of God, he communicated love, security, nurturing and many other things without me even seeing him.

But to see the face of God is something differen. The word see is ra’ah which has a broad range of meaning from seeing, seeing in dreams, in the spirit world, in visions and in the physical world. So if you see God in any of these capacities you are doomed to die.  That is pretty harsh. I mean to gaze on the face of Medusa only turned you to stone, of course that is probably the same thing as dying.

Medusa was one of three Gorgon sisters in classical mythology.  The Roman poet Ovid in his work Metamorphoses tells the story of Medusa who was a ravishingly beautiful woman who had many suitors.  However Poseidon raped her in Athen’s temple and so enraged Athena that she transformed Medusa’s beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of her would turn onlookers to stone.  King Polydectes commissioned the hero Perseus to get the head of Medusa.  Medusa was the only one of the three Gorgons who was mortal thus  Perseus was able to slay her but only by looking at her reflection in a mirror. When she was slain she was pregnant from Poseidon, I mean this old gal was really up against it.  Anyways after she was beheaded Pegasus the winged horse and Chrysaor  a sword welding giant sprang from her body.

I only mention this because I had a professor who was somehow tying this into the story of the Hebrews who feared death if they saw the face of God.  In other words God was just another myth tied into other myths of antiquity.  So I am really resisting many of the interpretations of Exodus 33:20 as it does smack of mythology and would like to have an explanation that would be totally removed from any resemblance to mythology.

Yesterday I was speaking with a woman who related to me an amazing story. When she was 21 and a young Christian she had an encounter with God.  Even now after many years in relating this story she became very emotional.  She told how she entered a room and suddenly felt the presence of God in a way she never had before or since felt it. She felt she was very close to actually seeing God and said if she did, she did not think she could bear it as just His presence left her almost incapacitated.  She said even into the next day she had difficulty adjusting and keeping her mind on her work. She felt that if God really did appear to her she would die. Not that God would have killed her, but that she would have just given up any connection with her life.

I believe this is what happened to Enoch.  He was not just debaring speaking to God, he actually ra’ah saw God and just passed into His presence because he just could not bear to leave Him.  He had seen God and what He truly was and suddenly this world had no meaning for Him at all, he had no desire to remain in this world and so God just took him. It was not that God’s face was so terrible like Medusa, or that there His presence was too overwhelming that it struck him dead like lightning, it was just that his love for God  was made complete and thus he had to be joined with God, he could never again leave Him. The verse does not say that a person would die just that a person could not chi, live after seeing God.  This woman ceased to live for over twenty four hours after her experience.  She became so heavenly minded that she was of no earthly good.   I have heard preachers condemn some Christians as being too heavenly minded that they were of no earthly value. I don’t believe any living human being becomes that heavenly minded, I think it is just a preacher’s way of making fun of people who sincerely seek the face of God.  Because I believe Exodus 33:20 is not teaching that if you see the face of God you will die but that if you see the face of God you will become so heavenly minded for the rest of your life that you become of no earthly value so He would have to just take you home because you would cease to chi living, you might still be alive, but you would not be chi, living or functioning in this world any longer.

Posted in DevotionalsTagged Exodus 33:11, Exodus 33:20