I told you in the Nugget I wrote on the Expanding Universe, before we went to Indonesia: “In the next Nugget I want to explore this in a different way and share with you a rabbinical interpretation of origins and God which is also mind-blowing. But I thought it prudent before I did that to cover the topic of the Earth being in the best position to observe the universe.” Now let’s investigate one verse in particular.
Then Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”
God said, “I’ll cause all my goodness to pass before you, and I’ll proclaim the name ‘the LORD’ before you. I’ll be gracious to whom I’ll be gracious, and I’ll show compassion on whom I’ll show compassion. But,” he said, “You cannot see my face, because a man cannot see me and live.” The LORD said, “Look, there is a place near me where you can stand on the rock; and as my glory passes by, I’ll put you in a crevice in the rock, and cover you with my hand until I’ve passed by. Then I’ll remove my hand so you may see my back, but my face must not be seen.”
Exodus 33:18-23
Moses had asked to see God’s face, to see His glory and to know His Ways. It is the last verse which is problematic. You can’t see My face Moses. Inference: My glory will be too bright for you to see Me face to face. But I will let you see My back. אָחוֹר[‘âchôr]. Our question has to be how does seeing God’s back diminish His glory from seeing His face? Frankly that doesn’t make much sense. Just what is going on here? The Hebrew word here is the key. The word has the sense of “behindness” or “afterness”. If we think of God as Light, then the best translation for the âchôr of light is “afterglow”. Moses you cannot see my full glory but I will let you see the afterglow. Ah, now that makes sense. But it adds a new dimension to the story of Moses encounter with God on the Mt Sinai / Mt Horeb.
God covers Moses over with His hand and shows His back or His afterglow to him. Think about that, even the covering with the Hand of God would be bright, bright beyond imagination. Despite God covering Moses in the cleft of the rock with His hand and showing him His afterglow, that was enough to light Moses up like a Christmas tree. The story continues with Moses descending the mountain during which time the glory fades until he gets to the foot of the mountain and appears before the people with the fading glory of God reflected on his face (2 Cor 3:7, 13). Upon which the people shout, “Argh, you are too bright to look at, cover your face with a veil. How ironic is that? Even the fading brightness of God’s afterglow was enough to burn their eyes. No wonder Revelation 21:23 reads:
And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light.
Revelation 21:23
But let me share with you yet another take on this story. One Rabbinical interpretation of the passage in Exodus on Moses seeing the backside of God is as follows.
God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock with His hand. But the Rabbis don’t imagine a big hand. More to the point, what did the hand do? A hand covers and protects. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth. Just imagine that one! Rather the Bible uses the human form as an anthropomorphism to describe the function of the Spirit Being which is God.
Moses saw the backside of God. But we must ask ourselves what does the backside of God look like? God is light. So Moses would have seen the backside of light. Light moves at 186,282 miles a second. If we had a rope and we tied knots in the rope at regular intervals and then swung it around in a circle as fast as we could, the outer most knot would move the fastest. The universe is constantly expanding at the speed of light. If God created the universe at the speed of light, on earth the speed of light is 186,282 miles / sec, but the speed of light at the end of the rope is way faster. There is an inverse relationship between the speed of light and time. The closer you get to the speed on light the more time stands still.
Time moves more slowly at the end of the universe. A Jewish scientist used an algorithm to test time at the edge of the universe. He came up with the conclusion that the age of the universe at the edge of the universe is 7 days old. God sees the end from the beginning. God is sitting at the end of the universe looking back. If Moses saw the back side of light; the place where light had been, then Moses was looking at the story of time in pictures. The Rabbis say this is how Moses wrote Genesis. I.e. God caused the history of the earth to pass before him and Moses wrote it all down.
This is a relatively short Nugget compared to some of my other ones, but deep and pithy. So you have lots to think about on this one. I am declaring this Nugget the last in my series on the universe. Next week we will look at something different.