Exodus 33:18

And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

MOSES’ REQUEST TO SEE GOD’S GLORY, AND GOD’S REPLY TO IT.

(18-23) Not till he had received full assurance of the people’s restoration to favour did Moses prefer any request for himself. Then, however, he made use of the privilege granted him to speak with God, “as a man speaketh unto his friend,” in order to obtain a blessing for which his spiritual nature craved, and than which he could conceive nothing more desirable. “Shew me,” he said, “I beseech thee, thy glory.” All that he had yet seen of God was insufficient—only raised his desire, only sharpened his appetite to see more. He craved for that “beatific vision” which is the final reward of them that are perfected in another world. God could not grant his request in full, for it is impossible so long as we are in the flesh that we should look on God and live. “No man hath seen God at any time” (John 1:18). But He granted all that could be granted. He made “all his goodness pass before” Moses; He gave him a fresh revelation of His name (Exodus 34:6-7); and He even let him see some actual portion of His “glory”—as much as mortal man could possibly behold—more than any son of man had ever beheld before—more, probably, than any other son of man will ever behold until the consummation of all things (Exodus 33:22-23).

Benson Commentary

Exodus 33:18. I beseech thee, show me thy glory — Thy glorious majesty, the brightness of thy countenance, some such manifestation of thyself as becomes thy excellence, and such as shall be seen in the other life, or the highest I am capable of seeing on earth. Moses had lately been in the mount with God, and had had as intimate communion with God as ever any man had on this side heaven, and yet he still desires a further acquaintance. Show me thy glory — Make me to see it; so the word is: make it some way or other visible, and enable me to bear the sight of it. Not that he was so ignorant as to think God’s essence could be seen with bodily eyes, but having hitherto only heard a voice out of a pillar of cloud or fire, he desired to see some representation of the divine glory, such as God saw fit to gratify him with.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

33:12-23 Moses is very earnest with God. Thus, by the intercession of Christ, we are not only saved from ruin, but become entitled to everlasting happiness. Observe here how he pleads. We find grace in God's sight, if we find grace in our hearts to guide and quicken us in the way of our duty. Moses speaks as one who dreaded the thought of going forward without the Lord's presence. God's gracious promises, and mercy towards us, should not only encourage our faith, but also excite our fervency in prayer. Observe how he speeds. See, in a type, Christ's intercession, which he ever lives to make for all that come to God by him; and that it is not by any thing in those for whom he intercedes. Moses then entreats a sight of God's glory, and is heard in that also. A full discovery of the glory of God, would overwhelm even Moses himself. Man is mean, and unworthy of it; weak, and could not bear it; guilty, and could not but dread it. The merciful display which is made in Christ Jesus, alone can be borne by us. The Lord granted that which would abundantly satisfy. God's goodness is his glory; and he will have us to know him by the glory of his mercy, more than by the glory of his majesty. Upon the rock there was a fit place for Moses to view the goodness and glory of God. The rock in Horeb was typical of Christ the Rock; the Rock of refuge, salvation, and strength. Happy are they who stand upon this Rock. The cleft may be an emblem of Christ, as smitten, crucified, wounded, and slain. What follows, denotes the imperfect knowledge of God in the present state, even as revealed in Christ; for this, when compared with the heavenly sight of him. is but like seeing a man that is gone by, whose back only is to be seen. God in Christ, as he is, even the fullest and brightest displays of his glory, grace, and goodness, are reserved to another state.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Shew me thy glory - The faithful servant of Yahweh, now assured by the success of his mediation, yearns, with the proper tendency of a devout spirit, for a more intimate communion with his divine Master than he had yet enjoyed. He seeks for something surpassing all former revelations.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18-23. I beseech thee, show me thy glory—This is one of the most mysterious scenes described in the Bible: he had, for his comfort and encouragement, a splendid and full display of the divine majesty, not in its unveiled effulgence, but as far as the weakness of humanity would admit. The face, hand, back parts, are to be understood figuratively.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

i.e. Thy glorious majesty, the brightness of thy countenance, some such manifestation of thyself as becomes thy excellency, and such as shall be seen in the other life; or that glorious shape which, together with a human voice, thou hast now assumed. But for the essence of God, as that was and is and ever will be invisible to bodily eyes, 1 Timothy 6:16, so a man of such great reason and deep knowledge in Divine things, and universal learning, could not be ignorant of it, and therefore would not desire it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. Not any visible lustre, splendour, and brightness, as a symbol of the divine Presence, that he had seen, Exodus 16:7 nor the glorious essence of God, as Maimonides (b), which is invisible and cannot be seen, and of which Moses could not be ignorant; nor the glory of the heavenly state, which also he must know he could not see until he came thither; but he seems to mean some visible glorious representation of God, such as he had never seen, though he had been with him so long on the mount in the cloud, and heard his voice, and saw some appearances of brightness and glory, yet not in any form that he could frame any idea of; perhaps he may mean the Angel of God's presence, called his face, the promised Messiah and glorious Redeemer and Saviour, in whom there is such a bright display of the glory of the divine perfections; yea, is the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person; and this favour was granted him, with some proper limitations and restrictions; for though this request was, no doubt, sincere and upright, it might be attended with frailty and weakness; yet it is not utterly denied, but with some explanation is allowed, and perhaps was the highest favour ever granted to any before the incarnation of our Lord, at least in so full and glorious a manner as this was; Moses having by his suit obtained much, wants more and is emboldened to ask it, and in a good measure had it, as the following words show.

(b) Yesude Hatorah, c. 1. sect. 10.

Geneva Study Bible

And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy {g} glory.

(g) Your face, your substance, and your majesty.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

18. Shew me] Here, as a modern English reader would expect, ‘make me to see,’ not as in v. 13, ‘make me to know.’

thy glory] Thy full majesty.

18–23. Moses repeats, in a more definite form, his request of v. 13. He asks to be allowed to see Jehovah’s glory; but is told in reply that he cannot see this in its fulness (v. 20); he may, however, have a glimpse of it, sufficient to disclose to him God’s moral nature.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 18-23. - THE REQUEST TO SEE GOD'S GLORY, AND THE REPLY TO IT. Having obtained the full restoration of the people to God's favour, Moses felt emboldened to ask a boon for himself. He had already been admitted to closer communion with God than any one of the race of man since Adam in Paradise. But what had been granted him, instead of satisfying, only made him desirous of something further, something closer, something than which nothing more close could be imagined. So he asks to see the unveiled glory of God (ver. 18). He asks, that is, to see exactly that which man in the flesh cannot see, or at any rate cannot see and live. But, of course, he does not know this. God, in reply, tells him he shall see all that can be seen of him - more than anything which he has seen before. He shall see "all his goodness" - he shall have another revelation of the name of God (ver. 18); and, further, he shall be so placed as to see as much as mortal man can behold of "his glory" - God will pass by him, and when he has passed, Moses shall be allowed to look after him, and see what is here called "his back." This was probably some afterglow or reflection from the Divine glory, which language must have been as inadequate to describe as it was to embody the "unspeakable words" heard by St. Paul in the "third heaven," and declared by him "impossible for a man to utter" (2 Corinthians 12:4). Verse 18. - Show me thy glory. The glory of God had been seen by Moses to a certain extent, when God "descended in fire" upon Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18). It had been seen with more distinctness when he was called up and "went into the midst of the cloud" (Exodus 24:18). But he felt, nevertheless, that he had not as vet really beheld it. He longed for that ineffable blessing of the full "beatific vision," which is promised to us after death, if we die in the faith and fear of Christ (1 Corinthians 13:12). "Increase of appetite doth grow by what it feeds on" - and the veiled splendours that he had been allowed to see only made him hunger the more for the unveiled radiance that he had not seen as vet. Exodus 33:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Moses was emboldened by this, and now prayed to the Lord, "Let me see Thy glory." What Moses desired to see, as the answer of God clearly shows, must have been something surpassing all former revelations of the glory of Jehovah (Exodus 16:7, Exodus 16:10; Exodus 24:16-17), and even going beyond Jehovah's talking with him face to face (Exodus 33:11). When God talked with him face to face, or mouth to mouth, he merely saw a "similitude of Jehovah" (Numbers 12:8), a form which rendered the invisible being of God visible to the human eye, i.e., a manifestation of the divine glory in a certain form, and not the direct or essential glory of Jehovah, whilst the people saw this glory under the veil of a dark cloud, rendered luminous by fire, that is to say, they only saw its splendour as it shone through the cloud; and even the elders, at the time when the covenant was made, only saw the God of Israel in a certain form which hid from their eyes the essential being of God (Exodus 24:10-11). What Moses desired, therefore, was a sight of the glory or essential being of God, without any figure, and without a veil.

Moses was urged to offer this prayer, as Calvin truly says, not by "stulta curiositas, quae ut plurimum titillat hominum mentes, ut audacter penetrare tentent usque ad ultima caelorum arcana," but by "a desire to cross the chasm which had been made by the apostasy of the nation, that for the future he might have a firmer footing than the previous history had given him. As so great a stress had been laid upon his own person in his present task of mediation between the offended Jehovah and the apostate nation, he felt that the separation, which existed between himself and Jehovah, introduced a disturbing element into his office. For if his own personal fellowship with Jehovah was not fully established, and raised above all possibility of disturbance, there could be no eternal foundation for the perpetuity of his mediation" (Baumgarten). As a man called by God to be His servant, he was not yet the perfect mediator; but although he was faithful in all his house, it was only as a servant, called εἰς μαρτύριον τῶν λαληθησομένων (Hebrews 3:5), i.e., as a herald of the saving revelations of God, preparing the way for the coming of the perfect Mediator. Jehovah therefore granted his request, but only so far as the limit existing between the infinite and holy God and finite and sinful man allowed. "I will make all My goodness pass before thy face, and proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee (בּשׁם קרא see at Genesis 4:26), and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. Thou canst not see My face, for man cannot see Me and live." The words וגו וחנּתי, although only connected with the previous clause by the cop. ו, are to be understood in a causative sense, as expressing the reason why Moses' request was granted, viz., that it was an act of unconditional grace and compassion on the part of God, to which no man, not even Moses, could lay any just claim. The apostle Paul uses the words in the same sense in Romans 9:15, for the purpose of overthrowing the claims of self-righteous Jews to participate in the Messianic salvation. - No mortal man can see the face of God and remain alive; for not only is the holy God a consuming fire to unholy man, but a limit has been set, in and with the σῶμα χοΐκόν and ψυχικόν (the earthly and psychical body) of man, between the infinite God, the absolute Spirit, and the human spirit clothed in an earthly body, which will only be removed by the "redemption of our body," and our being clothed in a "spiritual body," and which, so long as it lasts, renders a direct sight of the glory of God impossible. As our bodily eye is dazzled, and its power of vision destroyed, by looking directly at the brightness of the sun, so would our whole nature be destroyed by an unveiled sight of the brilliancy of the glory of God. So long as we are clothed with this body, which was destined, indeed, from the very first to be transformed into the glorified state of the immortality of the spirit, but has become through the fall a prey to the corruption of death, we can only walk in faith, and only see God with the eye of faith, so far as He has revealed His glory to us in His works and His word. When we have become like God, and have been transformed into the "divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), then, and not till then, shall we see Him as He is; then we shall see His glory without a veil, and live before Him for ever. For this reason Moses had to content himself with the passing by of the glory of God before his face, and with the revelation of the name of Jehovah through the medium of the word, in which God discloses His inmost being, and, so to speak, His whole heart to faith. In Exodus 33:22 "My glory" is used for "all My goodness," and in Exodus 34:6 it is stated that Jehovah passed by before the face of Moses. טוּב is not to be understood in the sense of beautiful, or beauty, but signifies goodness; not the brilliancy which strikes the senses, but the spiritual and ethical nature of the Divine Being. For the manifestation of Jehovah, which passed before Moses, was intended unquestionably to reveal nothing else than what Jehovah expressed in the proclamation of His name.

The manifested glory of the Lord would so surely be followed by the destruction of man, that even Moses needed to be protected before it (Exodus 33:21, Exodus 33:22). Whilst Jehovah, therefore, allowed him to come to a place upon the rock near Him, i.e., upon the summit of Sinai (Exodus 34:2), He said that He would put him in a cleft of the rock whilst He was passing by, and cover him with His hand when He had gone by, that he might see His back, because His face could not be seen. The back, as contrasted with the face, signifies the reflection of the glory of God that had just passed by. The words are transferred anthropomorphically from man to God, because human language and human thought can only conceive of the nature of the absolute Spirit according to the analogy of the human form. As the inward nature of man manifests itself in his face, and the sight of his back gives only an imperfect and outward view of him, so Moses saw only the back and not the face of Jehovah. It is impossible to put more into human words concerning this unparalleled vision, which far surpasses all human thought and comprehension. According to Exodus 34:2, the place where Moses stood by the Lord was at the top (the head) of Sinai, and no more can be determined with certainty concerning it. The cleft in the rock (Exodus 33:22) has been supposed by some to be the same place as the "cave" in which Elijah lodged at Horeb, and where the Lord appeared to him in the still small voice (1 Kings 19:9.). The real summit of the Jebel Musa consists of "a small area of huge rocks, about 80 feet in diameter," upon which there is now a chapel that has almost fallen down, and about 40 feet to the south-west a dilapidated mosque (Robinson, Palestine, vol. i. p. 153). Below this mosque, according to Seetzen (Reise iii. pp. 83, 84), there is a very small grotto, into which you descend by several steps, and to which a large block of granite, about a fathom and a half long and six spans in height, serves as a roof. According to the Mussulman tradition, which the Greek monks also accept, it was in this small grotto that Moses received the law; though other monks point out a "hole, just large enough for a man," near the altar of the Elijah chapel, on the small plain upon the ridge of Sinai, above which the loftier peak rises about 700 feet, as the cave in which Elijah lodged on Horeb (Robinson, Pal. ut supra).