When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mountain, Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.
Parallel Translations
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When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mountain, Moses didn’t know that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.
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And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
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And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face sent forth beams while He talked with him.
Cross-references (16)
Passages linked to Exodus 34:29 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 17:2 He was changed before them. His face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as the light.
- Luke 9:29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became white and dazzling.
- Exodus 32:15 Moses turned, and went down from the mountain, with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand; tablets that were written on both their sides. They were written on one side and on the other.
- Revelation 1:16 He had seven stars in his right hand. Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest.
- 2 Corinthians 3:7-9 But if the service of death, written engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly on the face of Moses for the glory of his face, which was passing away, won’t service of the Spirit be with much more glory? For if the service of condemnation has glory, the service of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.
- 2 Corinthians 3:13 and not as Moses, who put a veil on his face, that the children of Israel wouldn’t look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away.
- Revelation 10:1 I saw a mighty angel coming down out of the sky, clothed with a cloud. A rainbow was on his head. His face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
- Acts 6:15 All who sat in the council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face like it was the face of an angel.
- John 5:13 But he who was healed didn’t know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a crowd being in the place.
- Acts 12:9 And he went out and followed him. He didn’t know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he saw a vision.
- Joshua 2:4 The woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I didn’t know where they came from.
- Joshua 8:14 When the king of Ai saw it, they hurried and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at the time appointed, before the Arabah; but he didn’t know that there was an ambush against him behind the city.
- Judges 16:20 She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” He awoke out of his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he didn’t know that Yahweh had departed from him.
- Mark 9:6 For he didn’t know what to say, for they were very afraid.
- Luke 2:49 He said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
- Acts 23:5 Paul said, “I didn’t know, brothers, that he was high priest. For it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.’ ”
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Exo 34:29 And it came to pass, when Moses…
Exo 34:29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
Ver. 29. The skin of his face shone.] God hereby assuring the people that he had inwardly enlightened him for their better instruction.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Quest. Why now, and not when he came down…
Quest. Why now, and not when he came down from God before?
Answ.
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1. Because now he obtained what he did not before, to wit, a glimpse of the Divine glory, which, though but very transient, left its print upon his face.
2. Now it was more necessary than before, to procure the greater honour to Moses, and to the law, 2Co 3:7,8,11, because of the late horrid Violation and contempt of them, which the Israelites had fallen into.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh,....…
And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh,.... That is, after Aaron and the rulers had had a conversation with Moses, then the whole body of the people by turns were admitted to come before him, and hear the laws of God from him:
and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai; besides the two tables of stone, and the testimony written on them, he gave them all the other commands he was ordered to write in a book, and which are recorded in this chapter; he kept back nothing from them, but enjoined them to keep all the Lord had commanded.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The skin of his face shone - This time…
The skin of his face shone - This time of his being in the mount he heard only the same he had heard before. But he saw more of the glory of God, which having with open face beheld, he was in some measure changed into the same image. This was a great honour done to Moses, that the people might never again question his mission, or think or speak slightly of him. He carried his credentials in his very countenance, some think as long as he lived, he retained some remainders of this glory, which perhaps contributed to the vigour of his old age; that eye could not wax dim which had seen God, nor that face wrinkle which had shone with his glory.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 29. The skin of his face shone] קרן…
Verse 29. The skin of his face shone] קרן karan, was horned: having been long in familiar intercourse with his Maker, his flesh, as well as his soul, was penetrated with the effulgence of the Divine glory, and his looks expressed the light and life which dwelt within. Probably Moses appeared now as he did when, in our Lord's transfiguration, he was seen with Elijah on the mount, Mt 17:2-3. As the original word קרן karan signifies to shine out, to dart forth, as horns on the head of an animal, or rays of light reflected from a polished surface, we may suppose that the heavenly glory which filled the soul of this holy man darted out from his face in coruscations, in that manner in which light is generally represented. The Vulgate renders the passage, et ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua, "and he did not know that his face was horned;" which version, misunderstood, has induced painters in general to represent Moses with two very large horns, one proceeding from each temple. But we might naturally ask, while they were indulging themselves in such fancies, why only two horns? for it is very likely that there were hundreds of these radiations, proceeding at once from the face of Moses. It was no doubt from this very circumstance that almost all the nations of the world who have heard of this transaction, have agreed in representing those men to whom they attributed extraordinary sanctity, and whom they supposed to have had familiar intercourse with the Deity, with a lucid nimbus or glory round their heads. This has prevailed both in the east and in the west; not only the Greek and Roman saints, or eminent persons, are thus represented, but those also among the Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Chinese.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Exo 34:29. The skin of his face shone —…
Exo 34:29. The skin of his face shone — At this time of his being in the mount, he heard only the same he had heard before. But he saw more of the glory of God, which having with open face beheld, he was, in some measure, changed into the same image. This was a great honour done to Moses, that the people might never again question his mission, or think or speak slightly of him. He carried his credentials in his very countenance; some think, as long as he lived he retained some remainders of this glory, which perhaps contributed to the vigour of his old age; that eye could not wax dim which had seen God, nor that face wrinkle which had shone with his glory.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The two tables of testimony - Compare Exo 31:18.
The two tables of testimony - Compare Exo 31:18.
The skin of his face shone - Compare Mat 17:2. The brightness of the Eternal Glory, though Moses had witnessed it only in a modified manner Exo 33:22-23, was so reflected in his face, that Aaron and the people were stricken with awe, and feared to approach him until he gave them words of encouragement.
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The word translated “shine” is closely connected with a word translated “horn”; and hence, the Latin version and others have rendered the verb “to be horned.” From this rendering of the word has arisen the popular representation of Moses with horns on his forehead; e. g. in Michaelangelo’s statue at Rome.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Horned. That is, shining, and sending forth rays of…
Horned. That is, shining, and sending forth rays of light like horns. (Challoner) --- Septuagint, "encircled with glory." St. Paul (2 Corinthians iii. 7,) says, the Hebrews could not look steadfastly at the face of Moses, on account of the glory of his countenance. Hence, he was forced to have a veil, which, the apostle observes, was not taken off from the old law till Christ appeared. The Jews and heretics still read the law and the gospel with a veil over their eyes and heart, without understanding them, as they are hidden to those who perish, 2 Corinthians iv. 3. The Jews are much enraged at some Christians, who have represented Moses with horns, as if, they say, he were a devil, or his wife an adulteress. (Stacchus and Drusius.) --- Hebrew, "his skin was radiant" all over his face. These rays commanded respect and awe from the people, who had before said contemptuously, Moses---the man, (chap. xxxii. 1,) as they shewed that God was with him. They had not appeared before, though he had often conversed with the Lord: but now, having seen the glorious vision, they adhered to him during the remainder of his life, particularly when he enforced the obligations of the law to the people. (Haydock) --- The Arabs make their hair stand up like little horns, when they are about 40 years old. (Patric. ii. 4. Navig.) Homer mentions the like custom, and Diomed laughs at Paris calling him the pretty-horned. (Iliad xi.) Many of the ancient heroes and gods are represented with horns, particularly Bacchus, whose history reminds us of many particulars, which belong to Moses. He was born or educated in the confines of Egypt, was exposed on the waters, in a box; had two mothers, and very beautiful. While his army enjoyed the light, the Indians were in darkness. He was preceded by a pillar, had women in his train, dried up rivers with his thyrsus or wand, which had crawled, like a serpent, &c. (Huet. &c.) St. Epiphanius (her. 55,) says the Idumeans adored Moses. Their idol is called Choze by Josephus, (Antiquities xviii. 11,) which may be derived from Chus, the ancestor of Sephora, as Bacchus and Iacchus may denote "the son Bar, or the god Chus," Jah-Chus, who was adored in Arabia; so that Moses, Choze, and Bacchus, probably mean the same person. Chus peopled that part of Arabia where the Hebrews sojourned, Numbers xii. 1. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Moses wist not that the skin of his face…
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him--It was an intimation of the exalted presence into which he had been admitted and of the glory he had witnessed (Co2 3:18); and in that view, it was a badge of his high office as the ambassador of God. No testimonial needed to be produced. He bore his credentials on his very face; and whether this extraordinary effulgence was a permanent or merely temporary distinction, it cannot be doubted that this reflected glory was given him as an honor before all the people.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 29. The skin of his face shone — The…
29. The skin of his face shone — The long communion with Jehovah, and beholding so much of his glory, had set upon the face of the lawgiver a brilliancy that was unearthly. This statement is full of suggestion. It declares the spiritual exaltation of Moses. It shows how God may impart his own glory to those to whom he wills to show great favour. Exo_33:19. It teaches the child of faith that long communion and intimate fellowship with God transfigures into the image of the heavenly. Since the Hebrew word here translated shone (קרן)is composed of the same letters as the word for horn, the Vulgate has rendered it was horned, and hence the mediaeval notion represented in Angelo’s famous statue, that Moses had horns upon his forehead.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 29. the two tables of the testimony] as Exo_31:18…
29. the two tables of the testimony] as Exo_31:18 a; cf. on Exo_25:16.
shone] viz. from the reflexion of the Divine glory (Exo_24:16 f.). The Heb. verb is a peculiar one, recurring only vv. 30, 35: it is a denominative from ḳéren, ‘horn,’ in the sense of ray (see Hab_3:4), and means thus, was rayed. Jerome, following Aq., rendered literally in the Vulg. quod cornuta esset; hence the frequent representation of Moses in art with horns rising out of his head. LXX. δεδόξασται; see below.
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by reason of] The marg. is equally possible grammatically; but the context shews that the rend. of the text is right.
29–35. The shining of Moses’ face when he came down after God’s converse with him on the mountain. The sequel in P to Exo_24:15-18 a, Exo_25:1 to Exo_31:18 a (Di.).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (29) The skin of his face shone.—That an actual…
THE DESCENT OF MOSES FROM MOUNT SINAI WITH THE SECOND TABLES.
(29) The skin of his face shone.—That an actual physical phenomenon is intended appears from the entire narrative, as well as from St. Paul’s comment upon it in 2Co_3:7-18. According to some commentators, a radiance like that here described was a part of man’s original heritage, a feature of that “image of God” wherein he was created (Gen_1:27). The gift was forfeited by the fall, and will not be restored generally until the time of the restitution of all things. But meanwhile, from time to time, it pleases God to restore to certain of His saints the physical glory, which is the symbol of internal purity and holiness, as to Moses on this occasion and afterwards to Elijah on the mount of transfiguration (Luk_9:31), and to St. Stephen when he pleaded before the Sanhedrin (Act_6:15). A glory of the kind, but of surpassing brilliancy, belonged to the human nature of our blessed Lord, who concealed it ordinarily, but allowed it to appear temporarily at the transfiguration, and permanently after His ascension (Rev_1:16; Rev_10:1; Rev_21:23; Rev_22:5). The grant of the privilege to Moses was perhaps necessary to support his authority among a people of such materialistic leanings as the Israelites.
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While he talked with him.—Rather, through his talking with him. The brightness of Moses’ face was the reflex of that eternal glory which Moses had been given to witness on this last occasion, though in a veiled and modified manner (Exo_33:23; Exo_34:5-6), and which he had not seen previously. It remained henceforth a property of his countenance. Painters represent it by rays, or sometimes—but improperly—by horns, this latter usage originating in a mistaken rendering of the Vulgate (quod cornuta esset facies sua, instead of quod splenderet facies sua).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The skin of his face shone while he talked…
The skin of his face shone while he talked with him. Rather, "through his talking with him." The glory of God, as revealed to Moses on this occasion, caused his face to become henceforth radiant. Compare the effect of the transfiguration. (Mat_17:2) The Vulgate wrongly translates haran, "to shine," as if it were derived from keren, "a horn whence the painters of mediaeval times commonly represent Moses as horned. St. Paul"s words (2Co_3:7) are conclusive as to the true meaning.
Vers. 29, 30, 35. The shining of Moses" face.
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This strange phenomenon, one of the distinctive marks which most closely assimilate the Jewish with the Christian lawgiver, is well worthy of our attentive consideration.
I AS TO ITS ORIGIN. Admission to the Divine presence within the cloud had not, on the former occasion, left any such visible trace. It cannot, therefore, be ascribed simply to communion with God for a period of a certain duration. We must endeavour to see how the second sojourn in Sinai was differentiated from the first, if we would discover the real cause of the wonder. Now the difference was mainly this: that Moses in the interval had been severely tried, and had emerged from the trial better, purer, fitter for close intercourse with the Supreme. He had shown zeal, fervour, promptness, in checking the revolt against Jehovah; he had shown a spirit of extraordinary self-sacrifice in refusing to become the sole male progenitor of a people whom God would substitute for the existing Israel, (Exo_32:10) and in offering himself as an atonement for the people"s sins (ib, 32); and he had shown that persistent importunity in kindly intercession for others (Exo_33:12-16) with which God is especially pleased. Under these circumstances thus elevated above his former self he had been admitted, not only to a second conference of forty days" duration, but also to a special vision never vouchsafed to any but him of the Divine glory. (ib, 8-28; Exo_34:5, Exo_34:6) The radiance that rested on his face is ascribed especially to his long "talk" with God (ver. 29); but we can scarcely doubt that a portion of it was due to the transcendent vision which passed before him prior to the forty days" conference. The brightness then shed upon his face increased from day to day during the long and close communion closer now than before, from his greater fitness; and he, "with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, was changed into the same image from glory to glory", (2Co_3:18) until his countenance was such that it could not be steadfastly beheld for long; and he, in mercy to his people, veiled it.
II AS TO ITS EFFECT.
1. Its immediate effect was to alarm. "Aaron and the elders were afraid tocome nigh him." The unknown and unexpected is always fearful to man; and this was a novelty which might well startle. What did the sight portend? Certainly, an increase of supernatural power. Would this power be used to punish and avenge? Would the radiance burn like fire, or scathe like the thunder-bolt? They could not tell. Knowing their own sinfulness, they trembled, conscience making cowards of them, as it does of us all. And they feared to approach nay, they drew back perhaps fled.
2. Its after effect was to increase Moses" authority. The glow was aperpetual credential of his Divine mission. Like the moon, it witnessed, whenever seen, to the absent sun. Always beheld, whenever Moses had any new orders to give, it was a sanction to his entire legislation, and caused the laws which were least palatable to be accepted without resistance. Though it did not prevent partial revolts, it kept the bulk of the nation faithful to their leader for forty years. Even when they did not see the brightness, the veil that hid it showed that it was there. Its presence could never be forgotten. Moses was exalted by it into a condition half-Divine, half-human; and was felt to be marked out by Heaven as the supreme chief of the nation.
III AS TO ITS INTENT. Its intent would seem to have been
1. To strengthen and support Moses in his difficult position as leader of awayward and "stiff-necked" people.
2. To impress the people, and render them more submissive and Obedient.(see the preceding section.)
3. To symbolise the great truth, that by drawing near to God, by communion with him, we become like him like him and ever more like; changing "from glory to glory;" reflecting his attributes, as snow-summits reflect the sunset; receiving from him a real effluence, which shows itself in our lives, in our acts, in our very features. There is in the countenances of God"s most advanced servants a brightness, a gladness, a beaming radiance, which can come only of long communion with him, and which is a sensible evidence, to those who "have eyes to see," that they are indeed his friends, his favoured ones. The best artists Perugino, Francia, Rafaelle sometimes, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Bellini, Luini, Basaiti express this in their pictures. But it is not a grace that has passed away.The eye that has true spiritual vision may still see among those who walk the earth faces with such unmistakable glow of true piety upon them as marks their owners for God"s friends, Christ"s loved ones, souls constant in their communion with him who is "the Light of the world," and "in whose light we shall see light.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 29-35. The shining face.
Consider
I THE SHINING OF MOSES" FACE (vers. 29, 30).
(1) A result of personal communion.
(2) A symbol of the glory of his dispensation. (2Co_3:7)
(3) A foreshadowing of the transfiguration. (Mat_17:1-8)
(4) Partly a consequence of inward mental exaltation. (cf. Act_6:15) Communion with God, vision of Jesus, the joy of salvation, fulness of spiritual life, make both face and character to shine. (cf. 2Co_3:18)
II THE FEAR OF THE PEOPLE (ver. 30). The beauty of the glory had something of terror in it. Symbol of the dispensation ministration of death". (2Co_3:7) See sermon by Dr. John Ker on Moses and Stephen Old Testament and the New" (" Sermons," p. 170).
III THE VEIL (vers. 31-33). The notable fact is that Moses did not veil his face during the time when veiling might seem to be most required, viz., while speaking to the people. The commandments were delivered with the face unveiled. When he had "done" speaking, Moses put this screen before it. The act, therefore, must be taken as symbolic. A symbol
1. Of the veiled character of the dispensation types, carnal ordinances, "broken lights," etc. Its "end" was not manifest.
2. Of the veiled hearts of the people. This kept them from perceiving even what might have been seen (cf. 2Co_3:12-18) The Gospel, in contrast with the law, is an unveiled system. (2Co_3:14) Preachers of the gospel, bearing this in mind, should use" great plain-hess of speech" (vers. 11, 12). The later system provides further for the removal of the veil from the heart (vers. 16, 17). It ministers "the Spirit.
IV THE VEIL TAKEN OFF ON ENTERING THE SANCTUARY (vers. 34, 35). "When Moses went in before the Lord," etc. Again symbolic
1. Of what is necessary for the removal of the veil from the heart. It must "turn to the Lord". (2Co_3:16) The instant it does so the veil will be taken away (ver. 16).
2. Of the privilege of Christian believers. They are admitted to gaze "with unveiled face" on the "glory of the Lord" (ver. 18).
V RESEMBLANCES AND CONTRASTS. Compare and contrast the privilege of Moses with that now enjoyed by believers in Christ. (2Co_3:18)
1. Resemblances.
1. Both have a vision of the divine glory.
2. Both are admitted to gaze upon it with face "unveiled.
3. On both the vision exercises a transforming influence.
4. Both must "go in" to the divine presence in order to obtain it.
1. Contrasts.
1. It is a higher glory which is revealed in Christ.
2. That, the privilege of one man; this, the privilege of all all.
3. That, an external transfiguration; this, spiritual.
4. That, a transitory glory; this, permanent and progressive. "From glory to glory. J.O.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Vers. 29-35. The shining of Moses" face.
I THE PHENOMENON ITSELF. The skin of Moses" face shone. As to the precise manner of this shining, it is of course vain to speculate; but we may be tolerably certain it was not anything in the way of a mere reflection from a mirror. It must surely have been the shining out for a little while of some glorious gift which had entered, if one may say so, into the bodily constitution of Moses. There may be some connection of this glory with the miraculous sustaining of his life without the eating of bread, or the drinking of water. Thus we are led to consider what wondrous capabilities there may be in matter, capabilities beyond our present knowledge to conceive. Even with unorganised matter, man himself has been able to do much. And the God of the physical universe has shown us how many wonders, beauties, and enjoyments rise out of matter under the power of vital action. Think of all that is exquisite in form, colour, and fragrance in plant-life. Think of the refinement which distinguishes the face of a cultivated man from that of some embruted savage. Think of that best of all charms visible in the face of one who is truly good. Then think, on the other side, of the degradations of matter. Think of the physical results of sottishness and sensuality. Think of the putrescence and corruption which seem to dominate a body when its principle of life has passed away. We shall then feel how, beyond anything we can at present conceive, there may be on the one hand an exaltation of matter, and on the other a degradation of it.
II THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF MOSES. He wist not that the skin of his face shone in this way. Of some change within him during the time when he was with God in the mount, he was doubtless conscious. He may have felt himself getting a clearer view of Jehovah"s purposes, and a heartier fellow-feeling with respect to them. He may have felt himself conscious of a remarkable approach to inward holiness and purity; but of this outward and visible expression of it he knew nothing at all. That which was intolerable to his deeply-polluted brethren, so much alienated in heart from God, was utterly unperceived by him. Thus effectually separated from his brethren, the separation came from no pretension of his own, but from an inevitable confession made by those who once and again tried to repudiate him. He who is filled with the spirit of God becomes more glorious than he can imagine. And from those who live near to God, we may be sure there goes out an influence, which, though they themselves be utterly unconscious of it, is yet most mighty in its effect on others. As Moses came down from the mountain, he would be anxiously thinking how he could convey to the people some sense of that which he himself had been privileged to see. He may have despaired of putting into words the impression made on his mind; but now behold God has taken the matter into his own hands. When we take care to keep right Godwards, God will take care that we are kept right and powerful manwards. Our greatest impression upon men is to be made, not by that which we are labouring to achieve, but by that which we achieve unconsciously, when we become as much as possible mere instruments of the wisdom and power coming from above.
III THE CONDUCT OF THE PEOPLE. It is not made clear as to whether the people were unable to gaze upon the splendour of Moses" face through the excess of light which radiated thence, or whether they were filled with superstitious terror because one who hitherto had looked but as themselves had become so changed in appearance. Probably the latter way of accounting for their conduct comes nearest to the truth. They were afraid of Moses, much as the disciples were of Jesus when they saw him walking on the lake and thought it was an apparition. Hence we have another instance of how men, whom God made to be so near to him, yet through their alienation from him, and constant immersion in earthly concerns, start back when there is some overwhelming manifestation of the unearthly and the divine. Presence of mind is lost just when presence of mind would be most helpful. Moses put on the veil in necessary toleration of human weakness; but we should always read of such necessities with a feeling of humiliation. In only too many things these ungodly Israelites are our representatives. God, who is our benefactor, cannot reveal himself in all his glory, because of our weakness. When God honoured and enriched the mediator Moses by putting a divine splendour into his countenance, as he came down among men with the laws of a holy and a happy life, this very splendour became a cause of abject terror rather than of confidence and gladness. Yet when the final Mediator came, full of grace and truth, men rushed to the other extreme. They could see no divinity and authority, and in their contempt and presumption, put the Mediator to death. It is very difficult for men to make a right estimate of the outward shows of things. Y.
HOMILIES BY G. A. GOODHART
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
His face "shone literally, "shot out rays as we say, was irradiated, became radiant. Notice:
I THE CAUSE OF THE PHENOMENON. "Talked with him." Self had been forgotten in communion with Jehovah, in hearing him and attending to his utterances. It is from such communion as this that the radiant countenance results.
1. What the communion is. God a Spirit. Communion must be spiritual The fleshly face cannot directly reflect spiritual light, that light "which never was on sea or land." Spirit is kindled by spirit, the human by the Divine, when spirit meets with spirit and realizes the sympathy which exists between them.
2. What the communion does. The illuminated spirit, reflecting God, kindled into brilliancy by his light, cannot but shine out through the fleshly envelope which shrouds it. Illustration: As opaque porcelain shade to lamp, so is the body to the spirit; light the lamp, illuminate the spirit, and the shade, in either case, becomes radiant. If you would have a happy face, a radiant countenance, you must first have an illuminated spirit. That can only be gained from the Fount of light in and through communion with God.
II UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SUBJECT OF THE PHENOMENON. "Wist not." His face was radiant, but Moses knew nothing of it. His mind was so full of God that his attention was drawn off from all thought of his appearance. Notice:
1. All sincerity forgets egotism (F. W. Robertson). Attention is a fixed quantity; to fix it on God is to draw it off from self cf. a lock on a river; open the flood-gates of communion and the level of self-love is soon lowered.
2. Radiancy cannot be obtained by trying for it. If aim in prayer is to increase self-glory, it cannot succeed. God first; God all in all; then comes the illumination, and the light flows forth. Self lost in God cf. wick saturated with oil before we can ray out the light of God. How many selfish prayers are offered, and the countenances of those who offer them are often anything but radiant! The puritanical cast of countenance repels by its gloom rather than by its brilliancy. The best prayer is that which rises from communion; which seeks first, as in Christ"s model prayer, that God"s name may be hallowed, and his kingdom come, and his will be done, before going on further to seek satisfaction for personal needs.
Conclusion. Do you want to have a radiant face? The best way is not to think about it. Lose self, as Moses did, in communion with God; then your face will be radiant, though you know it not. G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The skin of his face shone.
Exo_34:29-35
The skin of his face shone.
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Moses transfigured
This was the transfiguration of Moses. Let us consider the narrative as a spiritual parable, and try to read in it some of the conditions and privileges of exalted communion with God. Communion with God is the highest prerogative of spiritual beings. It is the instinctive craving of human souls; it is the supreme privilege and joy of the religious life; it is the inspiration and strength of all great service. God redeems us and saves us by drawing us to Himself. By mysterious voices He solicits us; by irrepressible instincts He impels us; by subtle affinities He holds us; by ineffable satisfactions He makes us feel His nearness and fills us with rest and joy.
I. We are admitted to fellowship with God only through propitiatory sacrifice. Moses builds an altar under the hill, offers sacrifices upon it, and sprinkles the blood thereof before he ascends the holy mount to commune with God. We must seek fellowship with God through the one propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Not only is the sacrifice of Christ the medium through which the forgiving love of God becomes possible; it is the supreme expression of it.
II. We are qualified for our highest intercourse with God by the spiritual grace of our own souls; Moses was qualified for this revelation of the supreme glory of God by his peculiar magnanimity and self-sacrifice. When God admits us to intercourse with Himself, what we see will depend upon our capability of seeing. Only the pure in heart can see God.
III. We are admitted to visions of the higher glory of God only when we seek them for the uses of practical religious duty. If selfishness be a disqualification, so is mere sentiment. A man who seeks God for his own religious gratification merely may see God, but he will not see Gods supreme glory. Our chief reason for desiring to know God must be that we may glorify Him in serving others.
IV. The most spiritual visions of God, the closest communion with God, are to be realized only when we seek Him alone. In our greatest emotions we seek solitude instinctively. Human presence is intolerable to the intensest moods of the soul. No man can be eminent either in holiness or service who does not often ascend to the mountain-top, that he may be alone with God and behold His glory.
V. The supreme revelation of God to which we attain through such fellowship with Him is the revelation of His grace and love. When a man sees this, the glory of God has passed before him.
VI. The revelation of Gods glorious goodness transfigures the man who beholds it. (H. Allon, D. D.)
Unconscious beauty
He wist not that the skin of his face shone. Few and simple as these words are, there could be none grander written to the memory of a hero. The noblest and loftiest character is assuredly that of the man who is so absorbed in the Divine nature of his calling, and so conscious of the need of those for whom he labours, that he becomes forgetful of the beauty in his character which others recognize, and almost unconscious that he is himself the worker.
I. There are many unconscious believers and workers in the world still, who may gather helpful thoughts from this fact concerning Moses. Much time and ability has been devoted to discussing the question of Christian assurance. To say that if we do not feel that we are saved, we are not saved, is to lose sight of what salvation really means. It is nowhere stated in Scripture that an assurance of that salvation which is a gradual matter, a day-by-day struggle and deliverance, is either universal or necessary. God may think it best that some of us should not have assurance, as on that great day He kept Moses unconscious that the skin of his face shone.
II. Perhaps some of us may feel that there were moments of such bright and hopeful experience once, but they are past now, and that seems to us the saddest thought of all. Still we need not despair. We should go back as Moses did to the mount where God had spoken to him, to the source of the old enthusiasm and the former faith. If we go back and stand face to face with the crucified Christ, our life will glow anew with the radiance of His love, even though we ourselves are unconscious of it.
III. This holds good also regarding our work for God. Many a splendid silent work is done on earth, and the doer is perhaps unconscious of it, and may remain unconscious till the great day of the Lord shall reveal it. (T. T. Shore, M. A.)
Moses face shining: a picture of true glory
1. Man has an instinct for glory.
2. Man has sadly perverted this instinct.
3. The Bible rightly directs it.
I. The true glory of man involves fellowship with the Eternal. The human character is formed on the principle of imitation. To get a perfect character implies--
1. The existence of a perfect model.
2. The love of a perfect model.
3. The knowledge of a perfect model.
II. The true glory of man has an external manifestation.
1. True glory will show itself-in the face of our person.
2. Language.
3. Life.
III. True glory is never self-conscious. Moses wist not. There are several things that necessitate self-obliviousness in a truly great soul.
1. His standard of judgment.
2. His circle of life. He who stands before God feels his nothingness.
3. His spirit of life. Love is a passion that drowns the lover in the loved. I live, yet not!.
IV. True glory will command the reverence of society.
1. The law of conscience will ensure universal respect for it.
2. The law of guilt will ensure trembling homage for it. (Homilist.)
The shining face
I. The shining face the result of his long and close communion with God. The heavenly light within will shine out.
II. The shining face was beheld by the people, The good mans walk and conversation are known of all.
III. The shining face awed all who beheld it. The consciousness of sin makes the wicked fear pious friends, whose presence rebukes them.
IV. Moses knew not that his face shone. The more grace we have the less self-consciousness. The more good others see in us, the less do we see ourselves. Application:
1. If you cannot do anything else for God, you can exhibit a shining face.
2. Do not be discouraged because you are not conscious of any good influence you exert. (J. L. Elderdice.)
Communion with God
I. The distinguishing characteristics of communion with God.
1. It is mediatory.
2. It is individual.
3. It is protracted.
4. It is self-denying.
II. The irradiating power of communion with God.
1. Its manifestation.
2. Its unconsciousness.
3. Its effect.
(1) Awe-inspiring.
(2) Heart-attracting. (T. Baron.)
The Divine glory and its effects
We learn here three things with regard to the beauty of a sanctified character.
I. The nature of this beauty,--it is that which shines.
1. Its self-manifestation may be often a passive thing. It was Moses face that was the index of his mood at the time,--not his tongue nor his hands. So with the child of God; the beauty that bathes him is matter that exists independent of any definite words spoken, or any outward deeds done. The beauty of the believer is the beauty of joy; and joy does not always need speech to express itself, or the word to others, I am glad.
2. Then, too, we learn that spiritual beauty is often an unwitnessed thing. It is by no means conditioned by the position a man occupies, or the numbers that are there to see. For the glory on Moses face was not brought there just that others might watch and, admire. His features would have glowed all the same, had there been no one to watch and to marvel in all the plain; and heavens own light would have glanced and flickered from his face among the bare dead sands and unconscious stones where he trod, making the solitude around him luminous. So again with the child of God. His shining does not need the stimulus of spectators.
II. The secret of this beauty. Communion with God,--that is the source it must spring from, lending sanctity to the character, and beauty to the very face. To see Gods face is to, shine; to keep seeing it is to keep shining. It is thus that the marvel of the story is repeated, and Gods praying saints come forth from this privacy with their faces aglow; and the dying grow luminous on their beds, till the watchers wonder. Why, where is there brightness like the brightness of heaven? They are all lustrous there! Uncover yourselves therefore to the light; keep yourselves up where the light is shining. The struggle will be to do that, and will be over when you have done it. So and so only will you shine yourselves. The manner of this shining is reflection and the secret of it is communion with God.
III. The characteristic by which it is marked. That characteristic is unconsciousness. Moses, we are told, wist not that his face shone. It is always most real when it radiates unawares. Is it not the case that many an act which would otherwise have affected us favourably, attracted our admiration, won our esteem, is shorn of its grace and becomes worthless or worse for us, just because vitiated by self-consciousness? For instance, I may be glad to receive a kindness; but if the man who professes to show it me betrays so plainly that he thinks it a kindness, and imposes a debt on myself while he does it, then I refuse to have the favour at his hands, or I grudge the necessity that compels me. Or I may feel that I stand in need of forgiveness; but if the brother at whose door I am suing for it makes it clear, while he gives me his hand, that he counts his act a magnanimous one, his forgiveness is emptied of its grace. Why, there are books one could point to, as well as people, in whose case the principle holds true. In language and in sentiment they are otherwise unexceptional. They treat of moral and religious truth with a freshness of view and a beauty of utterance which in themselves would arrest and stimulate. But you cannot help feeling throughout them the presence of an evil underflavour the while--the taint of the writers self-consciousness in it all, that maims and defiles his message--the traces of a spiritual ostentation through the whole, that makes you recognize while you read that the question is being asked you--not, What think ye of the truth merely? but, What think ye of me who am saying it? Nor is this unconsciousness without its directer proofs. Two at least will invariably be found with it--appreciation of others, depreciation of self. Nor is the reason of all this far to seek. This unconsciousness of grace that we speak of, issuing not only in appreciation of others, but in depreciation of self, may be accounted for by converse with a high ideal. For the greater an artists success, the greater his sense of imperfection. The more that he strives to attain, the further will his standard recede from him, the more unsatisfactory will his attainments appear in the light of it. What, then, must the ease be when the standard is an infinite one, and the mark we reach forth to is the perfection of a God! (W. A. Gray.)
The element of unconsciousness in character
See also Jdg_16:20.
I. Let us note, in the first place, that this quality of unconsciousness is invariably connected with a peculiar antecedent history. The facts stated regarding Moses and Samson do not stand out in isolation in their biographies. They are in immediate relation to the preceding incidents in their careers. The new man can form good habits, just as the old man formed evil ones, and in proportion as these habits gain strength, the consciousness of effort after the things which they lead us to do begins to diminish in us. Hence in the details of daily life the character of the believer, as he grows in holiness, shines with a radiance of which he is largely unaware. Now this truth has another side, for it comes in also with fearfully dangerous influence in the continued commission of sin. The more one practises iniquity, the greater facility he acquires in committing it, the stronger becomes the tendency to indulge in it, and the weaker ever is his sense of its enormity. In a manufacturing town in England, some years ago, it became necessary to do some repairs at the top of one of the tallest smoke-stacks in the principal factory, and an expert was engaged for the purpose. He flew his kite over it, and fixed his tackle so that he could hoist himself up. But when he reached the summit, through some accident, the whole tackling fell, and there he stood without any means of coming down again. Every plan was tried to get a rope to him without success. A great crowd collected at the base of the chimney, and among these was the wife of the unfortunate man. A happy thought struck her, in her earnestness for her husbands safety. She knew that he wore at the moment stockings which her own hands had just knitted. So, at her suggestion, they called him to undo the yarn of which they were composed, and by and by a tiny thread came fluttering down on the breeze. When it reached the earth, they tied it to a piece of twine, which he drew up with the yarn. To the twine again they tied a thicker string, and then to that a cord, and to that again a cable, and so he was saved. That was a work of deliverance. But there is a similar gradation in the cord of evil habit by which a sinner is bound. It is first a brittle yarn, then a tiny twine, with which a child might play.
II. But I advance another step in the prosecution of my theme, and remark, in the second place, that this quality of unconsciousness marks the culmination of character either in good or evil. The highest greatness is that which is unconscious of itself. The very forthputting of an effort to be great in any direction indicates that we lack that greatness. So long as we are conscious of an effort to be something, we are not fully that something, therefore we ought to redouble our exertions. When a venerable minister was called upon once unexpectedly to preach, he delivered extempore a sermon of great power. It seemed to come perfectly natural to him. There was no appearance of effort; and one hearer, amazed at the character of the discourse, asked, How long did it take you to make that sermon? Forty years, was the reply. And there was deep philosophy in the answer, for had the old man eloquent not given these forty years to diligent study and laborious effort, he could not then have preached so easily. Now, in the same way, our conscious endeavours after the Christian life will, if faithfully prosecuted, lead up to a time when, in some emergency, we shall meet it with the most perfect ease, and be hardly aware of any exertion. Let this thought stimulate us to perseverance in our great Christian life-work of building character. The longer we labour the less arduous will our labour become, until by and by we shall lose the sense of labour in the joy and liberty of our happy experience. But note again at the other end of the scale that the deepest degradation is that which is unconscious of its dishonour. Hence, however degraded a man may be there is hope of his recovery if he only knows his condition. That is the handle by which yet, through the grace of God, you may raise him, and you will succeed in lifting the fallen from their defilement only by awakening in them that consciousness. Their fall has stunned them into insensibility, and the first thing you have to do with them is to restore them to consciousness. ( W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Communion with God, and its results
I. First, the converse which Moses had with God on the top of the mountain was the cause of that glory which rested on his countenance. There is, no doubt, a great deal of what is miraculous in connection with this transaction; but though we are not to look in our own particular case for anything analogous to it, yet we are to expect something spiritually correspondent with it.
1. The first remark that I offer to your attention is, that on ascending the mountain to hold intercourse with God, Moses observed the rites of the religious dispensation under which he lived. A devotional spirit must be cherished and cultivated; and it is promised, on the part of the Saviour, that what we ask in prayer, believing, that we shall receive. But in addition to this, God must lift the veil from His own throne. He must give utterance to the voice of mercy and love. He must display reasons to the humble waiting spirit, and must manifest Himself in some clear manner, before we can be made conscious of communion with Him.
2. Moses ascended the mountain alone. This opens to us another principle of religion. It is this--that in all respects it is personal. Our devotional exercises are of this nature. It is true, indeed, that we meet in public fellowship; but there is a sense in which the soul sits solitary and alone in the midst of a mighty multitude. Here I stand, and there you sit; but one character, one faith, one love, one hope, one joy. And our several emotions are all personal, and belong to ourselves. You know not my feelings; I know not yours.
3. As Moses drew a pattern from God on the mountain, so must we derive grace to fill it up from the same source. Now as far as we are employed in building the internal temple of Christianity, we must derive grace and strength from intercourse with God for the discharge of this great duty; and as Moses received the law from God, so we must receive grace and power to obey it from the same source. This remark is applicable both to our personal and public duties.
II. The second general observation to be made relates to the nature of that light, and beauty, and glory, which rested on the face of Moses. I should here remark, that there is a great mystery in this, but that it was intended to be symbolical of a better glory. That intercourse with God will make or cause His beauty to rest upon the soul. There may be no external glory, such as beamed on the face of Moses, but a spiritual glory beaming forth, instead, upon the mind.
1. There must be, for instance, rapturous joy. How can it be otherwise? The impulses of religion, when they exist in the mind, as they should do, by constant fellowship with the eternal Trinity, must be transporting and animating in the highest degree.
2. Intercourse with God must have the effect of expanding the capacity and enlarging the soul.
3. I may also add, that intercourse with God will produce, if not external or physical beauty, yet a beauty of character. Internal purity will be corroborated by outward conduct.
III. The final remark which I offer for your attention, relates to the vail which moses put on his face when he descended from the mountain to hold fellowship with the people. There is a mystery in this; but the mystery we shall not attempt to unravel. Allow me here to say generally, that religion in its beauty and glory is often in the present life veiled beneath circumstances which obscure its grandeur. (J. Dixon.)
A transfigured soul
You have heard of the marks on the bodies of Roman Catholic devotees which go by the name of stigmatization. There appear on the hands and feet of the rapt saint wounds similar to those inflicted on the crucified Saviour. It is alleged that the intense brooding of their sympathetic and ravished souls on the Redeemers agonies have led to their bearing about, in a literal sense, on their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus. We shall leave physiologists to explain the alleged phenomena, or to expose the possible imposture, and go on to say that this physical stigmatization has a moral counterpart; that though the wounds inflicted on the Saviours flesh may not be reproduced on the bodies of His saints, the moral glory of His nature may be republished in their souls, and through their faces may be radiated into the world, as His own glory, usually veiled, once was allowed to burst through the environing flesh on the Mount of Transfiguration. In meditating on this incident in the history of Moses I suggest to you--
1. That the effulgence of his face, was the result of his eighty days fellowship with God. I have read somewhere that people who live together through long-wedded years at last grow like each other, not only in their ways of thinking, of looking at things--in their moods and habitudes of mind--but even in their cast of face and feature. Such power, it is said, has long and constant fellowship to make people variously constituted of like temper, and even appearance. I can understand it in the case of the moral and mental dispositions. The stronger nature makes the weaker surrender its own personality and qualities, and borrow from that by which it is swayed. It is, indeed, by the working of this mysterious law of spirit that the Christian believer is renewed into Christ. If, therefore, the face of the sage and seer shone with unwonted lustre, it must have been because of a corresponding purification of his moral nature. It is to this condition alone that a glimpse of the beatific vision and an insight into Divine things are given. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, and discern truth.
2. Did the translucency fade away, as the golden glory fades from the hill-tops when the sun has set; or did it last till the day of his death? Had he ever after kept his spirit up to the moral elevation to which it rose on Sinais height, the splendour of his visage would have been subject to no eclipse or wane; it would have shone not only with an undiminishing, but with an ever-increasing light.
3. Though the face of Moses shone, he was quite unconscious that there was anything unusual about him; he wist not that the skin of his face shone when he talked; he had no knowledge of the marvellous external results which his eighty days companionship with God had wrought in his appearance. There is a beautiful unconsciousness about the Christian. All the world is applauding and reverencing him; blessing him for the vision of excellence with which he refreshes it; acknowledging that his very existence fertilizes the field of life; but were you to overhear his own estimate of himself, you would find it other and different. Did you listen to his prayers, you would find them full of heart-breaking confessions of unworthiness. (J. Forfar.)
The law a light
1. First, it was signified that the law proceeded from a higher world of light, of knowledge, and of holiness, since its very gleams were to be seen outwardly on the minister of the law.
2. Since the people could not bear the shining of the light, it represented how fearful, condemnatory, and fatal the law was for a sinful people. (Otto von Gerlach, D. D.)
The highest excellence is that which is least conscious of itself
The greatest achievements made by the sculptor or the painter have been those in the production of which he has been fullest of his conception, and had least thought of himself. I do not mean to say that the noblest artists have not been indefatigable workers; on the contrary, they have laboured with such persevering effort that at last they can produce, almost without the consciousness of exertion, something that will never be forgotten; and their supreme work is that which seems almost to have come to them of itself, so that they were more passive than active in its transmission to their fellows. The best sermons write themselves, and are given to the preacher before they are given by him, so that he cannot think of them as wholly his own. But it is the same in spiritual things. If I am conscious of an effort to be humble, very clearly I have not yet attained to humility; while, on the other hand, the very moment I become conscious that I am humble, I have become proud. And so with every other grace. What a discount you take from a mans character when, after you have said of him, he is this, or that, or the other thing that is good, you add, but he knows it. You might almost as well have taken a sponge and wiped out all that went before. So if you know your excellence, you have not reached the highest excellence; there remaineth yet the loftiest and the hardest peak of the mountain to be climbed by you, and that is humility. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Light through converse with spiritual things
There is one kind of diamond which, after it has been exposed for some minutes to the light of the sun, when taken into a dark room will emit light for some time. The marvellous property of retaining light, and thereby becoming the source of light on a small scale, shows how analogous to light its very nature must be. Those who touched the Saviour became sources of virtue to others. As Moses face shone when he came from the mount, so converse with spiritual things makes Christians the light which shines in the dark places of the earth. Let your light so shine before men. (Weekly Pulpit.)
Moral illumination
The spaces between the windows of one of the rooms of a famous palace are hung with mirrors, and by this device the walls are made just as luminous as the windows, through which the sunshine streams. Every square inch of surface seems to reflect the light. Let your natures be like that--no point of darkness anywhere, the whole realm of the inward life an unchequered blaze of moral illumination. (T. G. Selby.)
The outshining of a joyful heart
Moses came down from the mount, when, like the bush of Horeb, he had been in the midst of the fire and was not consumed, and as he came, the light of his soul transfigured his face, the beauty of the Lord our God was upon him, and the ninetieth Psalm seemed to be shining through it. As the brightly-coloured soil of volcanic Sicily makes flowers of the brightest tints, so there was a garden in the prophets face, glorified by the outshining of his joyful heart. (Christian Age.)
The after-glow of devotion
One of the most solemn and delightful privileges of the traveller is to watch the after-glow upon the mountains when the sun has disappeared. This was accorded to us on several occasions, but was never more impressive than in the valley of Chamounix. To see the hoary head of Mont Blanc, and even the pointed aguiles of the locality, too steep to allow the snow to settle on them, all aglow with rosy tints, made us feel as though by some transformation scene we were inhabitants of another world, or as though heaven had come down to earth, and the tabernacle of God had been pitched among men. (G. Kirkham.)
Light reflected from the cross
With much pathos Mr. Varley once told the story of Sybil, a negress slave, whose mistress said to her: When I heard you singing on the house-top I thought you fanatical, but when I saw your beaming face I could not help feeling how different you were to me. Sybil answered, Ah, missus, the light you saw in my face was not from me, it all came fleeted from de cross, and there is heaps more for every poor sinner who will come near enough to catch de rays.
Exhortation to humility
I charge you, be clothed with humility, or you will yet be a wandering star, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. Let Christ increase, let man decrease. Remember, Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone. Looking at our own shining face is the bane of the spiritual life, and of the ministry. Oh! for closest communion with God, till soul and body, head and heart, shine with Divine brilliancy! But oh! for a holy ignorance of their shining! (R. McCheyne.)
The absence of self-consciousness
Near the close of the summer season, in a pleasant summer retreat, a new-comer found the entire company of the little hotel preparing to give a fete in honour of a young lady who was about to leave them. The young men had hired a band, marquees were erected on the lawn, the house was wreathed with flowers; everybody had some little farewell gift ready for Miss Betty. The stranger was curious. This Miss Betty is very beautiful? he asked. No, I think not; it never occurred to me before, but I believe she is homely. A great heiress, then? On the contrary, a poor artist. Brilliant? Witty? Highly intellectual? No, indeed; she never said a fine thing in her life. But she is the best listener I ever knew. Neither is she learned or clever or fascinating; but she is the most lovable girl in the world. What is the charm, then? Bettys friend looked perplexed. I do not know, he hesitated, unless it is that she never thinks of herself. The charm of this woman was an absolute absence of all self-conscious- ness. She was neither vain nor modest. She simply forgot that there was such a person as Betty Gordon, and with her warm heart and quick sympathies threw herself into the lives of others. It was a peculiar, powerful attraction, and brought the little world about her to her feet.
He put a vail on his face.
The vailed face
It appears to be a law of our being, and the being of all material things, that everything grows like to that with which it is conversant and familiar. It is a law ruling all creation. We find it in the Arctic regions and we find it in the tropics--namely, life assimilates itself to the nature which is around it. Friendship, the intercourse of common friendship, will affect the countenance. When we go to moral life, there is its evil and its blessed application. Those who frequent the good gather the image of their goodness; and those who deal much with God, they grow God-like.
I. What was the glory on Moses face? St. Paul gives us a remarkable answer to this question. He says, They could not look steadfastly to the end of that which is abolished. That which is abolished is the law, and the end of the law is Christ; therefore the glory upon Moses face was the Lord Jesus Christ.
II. It was not in compassion for the weakness of the israelites that Moses put a vail upon his face. The jews had lost the power to see the end of that which is abolished, to see the glory of God in Jesus Christ reflected in the law. The vail was judicial, the consequence of sin; it was interposed between them and the beauty, the lustre, of the mighty glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
III. There are vailed hearts among us now; and the reason of the vail is sin. Do you think that like those Israelites you have committed some sins under the mount? It will quite account for the vail, and the vail will be proportioned to that state of life. Every wilful disobedience of conscience, every going against a conviction, will thicken your vail. It will be Gods retribution to you--the intellect dulled, the mind warped, the heart hardened, the Spirit hindered, by the sin. What is the remedy? When it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. Then Christ is the remedy. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Moses vail
The vail which Moses put on his face, when he perceived that it shone--
1. Teaches us a lesson of modesty and humility: we must be content to have our excellences obscured.
2. It teaches ministers to accommodate themselves to the capacities of the people, and to preach to them as they are able to bear it.
3. The vail signified the darkness of that dispensation in which there were only shadows of good things to come. (A. Nevin, D. D.)
The vail on Moses face
St. Paul, in the New Testament, makes large use of this narrative of the glory that shone on Moses face as he came down with the renewed covenant. Thus he employs it as in a typical sense an emblem of the relative glories of the old legal and the new evangelical dispensation (2Co_3:10-18). Even as a rhetorical figure, how beautiful is this application of the narrative of Moses to the purpose of setting before Jewish Christians the relation of the new to the old dispensation. Moses, with his vail, stands as a symbol of his own dispensation, which was, in fact, the gospel under a vail. And the symbol is represented as having a threefold significancy, when contemplated in its different parts. First, the symbol points out the intrinsic excellence and glory of the old dispensation, even though far less glorious than the new. But as the glory of Moses face was absorbed and lost when he entered the tent of meeting, to commune with God, so the brightness of the old dispensation of Moses is eclipsed in the transcendent brightness of the gospel. Again, the narration of the veiled Moses, in the apostles view, symbolizes the comparative obscurity of the old exhibition of the way of salvation. The vail represents the indistinct view which the Israelites had through the ritual teachings of the law; the brightness of the gospel light was covered up by rites that their minds did not penetrate. Nor will many of them now lift the vail, as the new dispensation invites them to do. Hence, again, this vail typified the blindness and ignorance under which the Jewish mind laboured, even in the time of the apostle. They had so long looked at Moses vailed that they now seemed to think the very vail an essential part of the system of salvation. (S. Robinson, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_34:29-35
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_34:29-35
THE GLORY OF MAN
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The glory of man is harmony with his Maker, likeness to his Maker, consecration to the service of his Maker, and the attestation of his Maker’s approval in his character and life. In this sense Moses was glorified. In this, and also in other and sublimer senses, was the “Son of Man glorified” (John 17) Moses’ glory was external as well as moral, but he belonged to an external dispensation. It is the privilege of every Christian to have this glory, not in the mere lustre of the face, but in the moral and influential sphere of the heart and life (Joh_17:22-23; Col_1:27). Notice—
I. That this glory was the result of communion with God. For forty days and forty nights Moses had dwelt in the secret place of the Most High and under the shadow of the Almighty.” He who would know what glory is must go where that glory is to be obtained. Man usually seeks glory elsewhere; on gory battle-fields, in the arena of political strife, on the broad plains of literature, science, and art. Indeed, in these spheres Moses had “whereof to glory.” He occupied a high rank among warriors and statesmen and literati; but if we could question him about these matters he would count all these things loss, and tell us that his glory consisted in the manifestation of his Maker’s favour when on the holy mount. If man would now be glorified, he must “approach with boldness the throne of grace,” and then he will hear Christ say with reference to him and his fellow-worshippers, “The glory thou gavest Me I have given them.”
II. That this glory was open to the inspection of others. “And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold the skin of his face shone.” And so now. Not in the same literal way of course, but in a way no less real. One of the great features of Christianity is its publicity. None of its great events were done in a corner. Even the transcendent miracle of the transfiguration was before witnesses. So with Christian life all through the ages. It derives its glory “in secret,” but it exhibits its glory “openly.” The Christian is “a city set on a hill,” a “light shining in a dark place.” This glory will exhibit itself in the appearance, speech, action of those in whose heart Christ is formed “the hope of glory.” And that glory, unlike Moses’, as we shall see, “shines brighter and brighter to the perfect day.”
III. That this glory had a due effect on its beholders. What could it mean? It might signify the coming glory which should consume them for their sins. Was it a mute declaration that God had rejected the intercession of the mediator and was coming in flaming fire to have vengeance upon them? They were afraid. They waited. No fire fell. They were assured. Whereupon they “talked with Moses.”
1. The glory of a holy Christian life will have its effect upon the wicked. It will arouse conscience. Its awful contrast with the smouldering embers of an ungodly life may perhaps arouse the breath of prayer to fan them into a divine flame.
2. The glory of a holy Christian life will have its effect upon the good. It will encourage the feeble by an exhibition of the grand possibilities of piety. It will stimulate the strong to exhibit their glory more and more.
IV. That while this glory was manifest to all beholders, its subject was unaware of its existence. “Moses wist not that his face shone.” Self-consciousness is fatal to a glory that is more than tinsel or varnish, at all times and everywhere. It is the one thing against which the Christian should especially guard himself. There are certain facts of which it is necessary that he should be conscious. He should be conscious that he is born of God, that he loves Christ, that he is growing in grace, and that he has a hope of heaven. Of all else of the virtues and graces that flow therefrom, of past achievements, of present attainments, he should be forgetful.
1. Moses had no time to think about it. While it was transfiguring him he was in communion with God. When he ceased communion he was about God’s work.
2. Moses had no inclination to think about it. His ambition and desires were in quite a contrary direction. His one desire was to serve God and guide the people to the Promised Land.
3. He had no warrant to think about it. It was not a consequence of his own services, or virtue, or work. It was the manifestation of the grace of God.
V. That this glory being derived was not self-sustaining. “And when (not as A. V. till, in conformity with the fact that Aaron, &c., beheld the glory and—with Exo_34:35, and LXX. Vulg. Targums and most versions) Moses had done speaking … he put a vail on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord … he took the vail off.” See 2Co_3:13-16. (See Alford, in loco). “Moses placed a vail on his face in order that the sons of Israel might not look on the termination of the transitory.” He had to visit the Lord to renew that glory. It was like the sacred fire which the vestal virgins were to feed continually.
The Christian can only keep up the lustre of his holiness by continually deriving fresh supplies from its fontal source. His life can only be kept fresh, beautiful, and glorious by always being near the Lord of his life.
Application—
1. Have you this glory? All other glories are but tinsel in comparison with it. All other glories fade both in themselves and in the recollection of the beholders. This is true glory, eternal glory.
2. This glory is obtainable through Him who is the “brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, and by fellowship with Him we shall walk in its light here, and afterwards “appear with Him in glory.”—J. W. Burn.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Law-Lights! Exo_34:1-35. Pressense says, that whatever opinions men may hold as to the integrity of that primitive witness, all must own that it contains pages in which one beholds, as it were, the reflection of the lustre which caused Moses’s face to shine when he held converse with God. It has ever been the pious mind which has through the eyes beheld the chain of revelation and the long series of Divine manifestations gradually unwind themselves. Just as they that watch for the morning gaze out from the height of the tower, longing with inexpressible desire for the approach of dawn; so does religious consciousness cast glances of fire upon the horizon as she looks out for the Divine Sunrise. The whole of the Old Testament pants and throbs with this Divine yearning, and it also shows us the finger of God writing in the heart of man the great preparation for the Gospel. The angels ever
“Draw strength from gazing on its glance,
Though none its meaning fathom may;
The Word’s unwithered countenance
Is bright as at Mount Sinai’s day.”
—Goëthe.
Sunset-Reflection! Exo_34:29.
(1.) Looking up into the bright blue sky on a clear summer day, we see far off great masses of white fleecy clouds, piled up against the sky like the snow mountains in Switzerland. We see them sailing quietly and gracefully across the dark blue heavens, bright with the dazzling effulgence of the monarch of the day.
(2.) And at sunset we may see the mighty clouds, kissed by the warm effulgence of the sovereign sun ere he sets behind the western hills, hang around in all their congregated hues of beauty, like the pillars of some grand tabernacle. Even the sky, illuminated to its centre, has caught the radiance, and glows intensely, changing its sapphire majesty to gold.
(3.) Where do the clouds and sky borrow their splendour? From the sun’s face. And so Moses, from communion with God, caught the reflection of His glorious face. And just as the sun shines on the clouds in the sky and makes them beautiful; and just as God shone on the face of Moses and made it bright; so, by intercourse with Jesus—by beholding His face—we are changed into the same image; our souls are made to reflect the brightness of His face.
“Sunlight seeking hidden shadow, touch’d
The green leaves all a-tremble with gold light.”
—Massey.
Soul-Excellence! Exo_34:29. An eminent writer says—True Christian excellence shines naturally like the sun, nut for the sake of effect, but because it cannot help shining. It was so with the face of Moses. But whenever a Christian grace becomes, so to speak, self-conscious, it loses its charm. It is like an Alpine flower brought from the lonely mountain peak, where it blushed unseen, and planted in the public garden, where it loses its beauty and fragrance, becoming a mere weed. You cannot handle a butterfly’s wing without rubbing off its delicate mealy dust, or a ripe grape without destroying the rich purple bloom upon it. And so you cannot handle admiringly your own Christian virtue without impairing its tender loveliness.
“Beware of too sublime a sense
Of your own worth and consequence.”
“If thou would’st keep thy garments white and holy,
Walk humbly with thy God.”
—Cowper.
Fellowship-Fruits! Exo_34:29-35.
(1.) For forty days successively, the great Jewish legislator was concealed on the summit of Mount Sinai, within the thick darkness by which the glory of Jehovah was veiled from the less-favoured eyes of the multitude. In this prophetic seclusion, separated from the world, his mind took deeply and strongly the impress of heaven. By communion with God his soul was saturated with the light of His holiness. His countenance by a spiritual affinity caught the celestial radiance and reflected it with dazzling brightness. On his descent from the mount, this splendour from the Divine Presence continued to shine on his face, that Aaron beheld it while he talked with him, and all the children of Israel were afraid to come nigh.
(2.) Brown says his face was radiant, and dispersing beams like many horns or cones about his head; which is also consonant unto the original signification. Our Saviour and the Virgin Mary are commonly painted with scintillations or radiant halos about their head, which by the French are designated the glory. In some of the ancient Bibles, Moses is described with horns. The same description we find on a silver medal, i.e., upon one side Moses horned, and on the reverse side the commandment against sculptured images. The believer’s walk and conversation should be thus encircled with “horns of glory,” rays of the beauties of holiness.
“Ne’er let the glory from my soul remove,
Till perfect with Thy ransomed flock above,
I cease to sin, but never cease to love.”
Soul-Shekinah! Exo_34:30-35.
(1.) In our atmosphere we have noticed the lower strata of clouds have a dark colour, for to them belong the smoke, and the steam, and the fogs, and the malaria, and the earthly exhalations. Above them are those which have left behind much of the earthly exhalations, but which are still not of perfect brightness and hue. But far above them, through the dry air of summer, may be seen other clouds beautiful in array, the white of their drapery pure, having left behind the impurities of earth, and having drawn nearer to the sunlight.
(2.) Here we have a picture of Israel, of Aaron and the elders, and of Moses. The Israelites were like the earth-clouds, with sombre faces dulled. Aaron and the elders were nearer God and so were brighter. But Moses was like the far-up cloud of silver purity, his countenance caught the bright perfections of God in the clear blue scene of communion. He knew it not, was as unconscious as the snow white vapour-vail; yet his face shone.
(3.) There are souls whose lives, spent amid the fogs and malaria and defiling exhalations of worldliness, are dark and ugly. Then there are others whose lives are higher up in the region of morality and so are less dense and repulsive, but still not clear and bright. And there are those who, living far above amid the sapphire-sheen of God’s infinite love, have lives all beautiful—comely with the comeliness which the Sun of Righteousness sheds upon them.
“To whose white robes the gleam of bliss is given;
And by the breath of mercy made to roll
Right onward to the golden gates of heaven,
Where to the eye of faith, they peaceful lie,
And tell to man his glorious destiny.”
—Wilson.
Moral-Transfiguration! Exo_34:30. (l.) Like the great Jewish lawgiver, the soul that is familiar with God in meditation and prayer cannot fail to contract resemblance to Him—cannot fail to catch a portion of His purity and greatness. When our Saviour prayed and held intercourse with His Father on the mount, His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light. In like manner every believer on the mount of prayer, during his heart’s intercourse with God, is spiritually transfigured.
(2.) It has been beautifully remarked that every face, according as it is more or less turned towards our Sun, must reflect a portion of His brightness. When Arthur returned from church there was a serene happiness expressed in his manner, that strikingly contrasted with the peevish restlessness and fretfulness of those whose thoughts bad not risen above earth. Lina thought that she had never seen her brother’s eyes so bright, or his manner more full of the sweet light of courtesy to all around.
“As though an angel in his upward flight
Had left his mantle floating in mid-air.”
—Baillie.
Legal Fears! Exo_34:30. Contrast the fears of the Israelites at Horeb, as they saw the shining face of Moses, with the joys of the disciples on Hermon as they beheld the countenance of the Mediator shine as the sun. Then the disciples of Moses were reluctant to draw near; but now the disciples of the Mediator exult in their nearness, “It is good for us to be here.” As Krummacher says, “Every glance, every play of look, every word, every majestic act, was radiant with grace and only grace.” Streams of peace flowed into the apostles hearts. Sweet and sabbatic rest was breathed around them. Every ray of His countenance that fell upon them was the transporting smile of a God. Here they would gladly have made tabernacles and remained—for ever remained in this beatific irradiation of the Only-Begotten, full of grace.
“Here let us holy tabernacles build,
That we may ever stay
In silent trance, with heavenly visions filled,
Joy that shall ne’er decay.”
Self-Consciousness! Exo_34:31.
(1.) Character!—A beautiful woman who knows that she is beautiful, and prides herself upon its possession, and parades her charms before the world for its admiration and applause, gives evidence of her self-consciousness by a thousand vain and artful ways, studied in order to attract attention. Alas! This is but too common with Christian souls. They know too well that their lives reflect the glory of God. They embrace every opportunity of exhibiting the radiance. They are proud of their spotless character and blameless conduct.
(2.) Consequence!—The transparent film of collodion on the photographer’s plate becomes instantly blackened and unfit for his purpose when placed in the light. And so there are graces so delicate and sensitive in the Christian soul that they are rendered opaque and useless for their object when regarded in the light of self-consciousness. It perverts the motives—lowers the aims—corrupts the affections. And Satan, as has been well remarked, takes full advantage of such self-complacency to tempt us to a grievous fall. There is on earth
“A host of prides, some better and some worse,
But of all prides, since Lucifer’s attaint,
The proudest swells a self-sufficient saint.”
—Hood.
Vail-Symbolism! Exo_34:33.
(1.) Type!—In 2Co_3:7-18, Paul says that it typified the blindness of the Jewish mind. The hardness of their hearts brought a vail over their spiritual sight, so that they could not look beyond the letter. They saw the tables of stone, and beheld the letters written upon them; but they could not behold the Divine glory in the face of Moses.
(2.) Token!—On the one hand it was a token that under the law man cannot see the face of God and live; and on the other that under the Gospel the natural man cannot behold the glory of God as it is in the face of His Son Jesus Christ—the only Mediator between God and man.
(3.) Testimony!—It spoke eloquently of the Divine glory in the law—of the spiritual lessons of the moral beauty and effulgence vailed in the Pentateuch from ordinary gaze. Aaron and the rulers might draw nigh and behold; but the giddy world-throng could not perceive.
“This is the mount where Christ’s disciples see
The glory of Incarnate Deity;
’Tis here they find it good indeed to be,
And view His face.”
—Elliott.
Renewed Reflection! Exo_34:35.
(1.) It has been supposed by some that the vail was put on by Moses after he had delivered the message from God, in order to hide the passing away of the brightness, which he retained on first coming forth from the Divine Presence. There is, however, no just reason for this supposition. Such a proceeding appears very unworthy of Moses, and entirely opposed to his character. He assumed the vail each time he came out from holding communion with God, because each time his face again reflected the glory of the Lord’s face. The vail was thus put on, in order that the people might not shrink from his presence.
(2.) When our earth turns away its face from holding communion with the sun, then the reflected brightness passes away from its features, and night reigns. No sooner does it again turn towards this dark world’s light, than again her countenance is illumined with the reflection of the sun’s glory. But again the face is withdrawn by the earth’s diurnal motion, and the glory fades. Even so, whenever Moses was with God, he came forth—his face resplendent with the bright effulgence; only to lose it, and again to have it restored.
“Welcome, dawn that never dies,
Day that needs no stars nor sun,
Where no tear-mists ever rise,
Hiding Thee, Eternal One.”
Modesty’s Vail! Exo_34:35. Macmillan says a true Christian does not parade his excellencies before the eyes of his fellow-creatures. He covers them with the softening vail of modesty, as Moses covered his shining face with a vail in his intercourse with Israel. The Christian, as the poet rhymes, does good by stealth, and blushes to find it fame. He prefers the shade of retirement to the theatre of display. In short, he does not attest himself in anything that he says or does, but retires behind the vail of modesty, and shows that he is animated by the same mind which was in Christ Jesus—that he has learned of Him who is meek and lowly in heart.
“Scarcely revealing,
Scarcely concealing,
Being’s sweet mystery
Smiles from the sod:
While on each leaf
Is written this brief
But beautiful history,
‘We are of God.’ ”
—Butler.
Spiritual Assimilation! Exo_34:35. Just as those who live at a royal court acquire courtly manners, and those who associate with refined and educated people acquire refinement insensibly; so those who live by faith in the presence of God, and as it were in the court of heaven, inevitably acquire something of a heavenly tone and spiritual elevation. As Macmillan says, “Communion with light imparts light; fellowship with greatness creates greatness; contact with the spiritual produces spirituality.” The apostle represents the transforming influence of the contemplative study of the Divine character when he says in allusion to the transfiguration of Moses, “We all, with unvailed face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
“From glory unto glory! O marvels of the word!
With open face beholding the glory of the Lord,
We, even we (O wondrous grace!) are changed into the same,
The image of our Saviour, to glorify His name.”—Havergal.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Exo 34:29. - Jdg 16:20.
Exodus
BLESSED AND TRAGIC UNCONSCIOUSNESS
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Exo 34:29. - Jdg 16:20.
The recurrence of the same phrase in two such opposite connections is very striking. Moses, fresh from the mountain of vision, where he had gazed on as much of the glory of God as was accessible to man, caught some gleam of the light which he adoringly beheld; and a strange radiance sat on his face, unseen by himself, but visible to all others. So, supreme beauty of character comes from beholding God and talking with Him; and the bearer of it is unconscious of it.
Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the locks which he had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, and tries his former feats; but his strength has left him because the Lord has left him; and the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, he has left the Lord. Like, but most unlike, Moses, he knows not his weakness. So strength, like beauty, is dependent upon contact with God, and may ebb away when that is broken, and the man may be all unaware of his weakness till he tries his power, and ignominiously fails.
These two contrasted pictures, the one so mysteriously grand and the other so tragic, may well help to illustrate for us truths that should be burned into our minds and our memories.
I. Note, then, the first thought which they both teach us, that beauty and strength come from communion with God.
In both the cases with which we are dealing these were of a merely material sort. The light on Moses’ face and the strength in Samson’s arm were, at the highest, but types of something far higher and nobler than themselves. But still, the presence of the one and the departure of the other alike teach us the conditions on which we may possess both in nobler form, and the certainty of losing them if we lose hold of God.
Moses’ experience teaches us that the loftiest beauty of character comes from communion with God. That is the use that the Apostle makes of this remarkable incident in 2 Cor. iii, where he takes the light that shone from Moses’ face as being the symbol of the better lustre that gleams from all those who ‘behold {or reflect} the glory of the Lord’ with unveiled faces, and, by beholding, are ‘changed into the likeness’ of that on which they gaze with adoration and longing. The great law to which, almost exclusively, Christianity commits the perfecting of individual character is this: Look at Him till you become like Him, and in beholding, be changed. ‘Tell me the company a man keeps, and I will tell you his character,’ says the old proverb. And what is true on the lower levels of daily life, that most men become assimilated to the complexion of those around them, especially if they admire or love them, is the great principle whereby worship, which is desire and longing and admiration in the superlative degree, stamps the image of the worshipped upon the character of the worshipper. ‘They followed after vanity, and have become vain,’ says one of the prophets, gathering up into a sentence the whole philosophy of the degradation of humanity by reason of idolatry and the worship of false gods. ‘They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.’ The law works upwards as well as downwards, for whom we worship we declare to be infinitely good; whom we worship we long to be like; whom we worship we shall certainly imitate.
Thus, brethren, the practical, plain lesson that comes from this thought is simply this: If you want to be pure and good, noble and gentle, sweet and tender; if you desire to be delivered from your own weaknesses and selfish, sinful idiosyncrasies, the way to secure your desire is, ‘Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ Contemplation, which is love and longing, is the parent of all effort that succeeds. Contemplation of God in Christ is the master-key that opens this door, and makes it possible for the lowliest and the foulest amongst us to cherish unpresumptuous hopes of being like Him’ if we see Him as He is revealed here, and perfectly like Him when yonder we see Him ‘as He is.’
There have been in the past, and there are today, thousands of simple souls, shut out by lowliness of position and other circumstances from all the refining and ennobling influences of which the world makes so much, who yet in character and bearing, ay, and sometimes in the very look of their meek faces, are living witnesses how mighty to transform a nature is the power of loving gazing upon Jesus Christ. All of us who have had much to do with Christians of the humbler classes know that. There is no influence to refine and beautify men like that of living near Jesus Christ, and walking in the light of that Beauty which is ‘the effulgence of the divine glory and the express image of His Person.’
And in like manner as beauty so strength comes from communion with God and laying hold on Him. We can only think of Samson as a ‘saint’ in a very modified fashion, and present him as an example in a very limited degree. His dependence upon divine power was rude, and divorced from elevation of character and morality, but howsoever imperfect, fragmentary, and I might almost say to our more trained eyes, grotesque, it looks, yet there was a reality in it; and when the man was faithless to his vow, and allowed the crafty harlot’s scissors to shear from his head the token of his consecration, it was because the reality of the consecration, rude and external as that consecration was, both in itself and in its consequences, had passed away from him.
And so we may learn the lesson, taught at once by the flashing face of the lawgiver and the enfeebled force of the hero, that the two poles of perfectness in humanity, so often divorced from one another-beauty and strength-have one common source, and depend for their loftiest position upon the same thing. God possesses both in supremest degree, being the Almighty and the All-fair; and we possess them in limited, but yet possibly progressive, measure, through dependence upon Him. The true force of character, and the true power for work, and every real strength which is not disguised weakness, ‘a lath painted to look like iron,’ come on condition of our keeping close by God. The Fountain is open for you all; see to it that you resort thither.
II. And now the second thought of my text is that the bearer of the radiance is unconscious of it.
‘Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.’ In all regions of life, the consummate apex and crowning charm of excellence is unconsciousness of excellence. Whenever a man begins to imagine that he is good, he begins to be bad; and every virtue and beauty of character is robbed of some portion of its attractive fairness when the man who bears it knows, or fancies, that he possesses it. The charm of childhood is its perfect unconsciousness, and the man has to win back the child’s heritage, and become ‘as a little child,’ if he would enter into and dwell in the ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’ And so in the loftiest region of all, that of the religious life, you may be sure that the more a man is like Christ, the less he knows it; and the better he is, the less he suspects it. The reasons why that is so, point, at the same time, to the ways by which we may attain to this blessed self-oblivion. So let me put just in a word or two some simple, practical thoughts.
Let us, then, try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. That way of self-oblivion is emancipation and blessedness and power. It is safe for us to leave all thoughts of our miserable selves behind us, if instead of them we have the thought of that great, sweet, dear Lord, filling mind and heart. A man walking on a tight-rope will be far more likely to fall, if he is looking at his toes, than if he is looking at the point to which he is going. If we fix our eyes on Jesus, then we can safely look, neither to our feet nor to the gulfs; but straight at Him gazing, we shall straight to Him advance. ‘Looking off’ from ourselves ‘unto Jesus’ is safe; looking off anywhere else is peril. Seek that self-oblivion which comes from self being swallowed up in the thought of the Lord.
And again, I would say, think constantly and longingly of the unattained. ‘Brethren! I count not myself to have apprehended.’ Endless aspiration and a stinging consciousness of present imperfection are the loftiest states of man here below. The beholders down in the valley, when they look up, may see our figures against the skyline, and fancy us at the summit, but our loftier elevation reveals untrodden heights beyond; and we have only risen so high in order to discern more clearly how much higher we have to rise. Dissatisfaction with the present is the condition of excellence in all pursuits of life, and in the Christian life even more eminently than in all others, because the goal to be attained is in its very nature infinite; and therefore ensures the blessed certainty of continual progress, accompanied here, indeed, with the sting and bite of a sense of imperfection, but one day to be only sweetness, as we think of how much there is yet to be won in addition to the perfection of the present.
So, dear friends, the best way to keep ourselves unconscious of present attainments is to set our faces forward, and to make ‘all experience’ as ‘an arch wherethro’ gleams that untraveiled world to which we move.’ ‘Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.’
The third practical suggestion that I would make is, cultivate a clear sense of your own imperfections. We do not need to try to learn our goodness. That will suggest itself to us only too clearly; but what we do need is to have a very clear sense of our shortcomings and failures, our faults of temper, our faults of desire, our faults in our relations to our fellows, and all the other evils that still buzz and sting and poison our blood. Has not the best of us enough of these to knock all the conceit out of us? A true man will never be so much ashamed of himself as when he is praised, for it will always send him to look into the deep places of his heart, and there will be a swarm of ugly, creeping things under the stones there, if he will only turn them up and look beneath. So let us lose ourselves in Christ, let us set our faces to the unattained future, let us clearly understand our own faults and sins.
III. Thirdly, the strong man made weak is unconscious of his weakness.
I do not mean here to touch at all upon the general thought that, by its very nature, all evil tends to make us insensitive to its presence. Conscience becomes dull by practice of sin and by neglect of conscience, until that which at first was as sensitive as the palm of a little child’s hand becomes as if it were ‘seared with a hot iron.’ The foulness of the atmosphere of a crowded hall is not perceived by the people in it. It needs a man to come in from the outer air to detect it. We can accustom ourselves to any mephitic and poisonous atmosphere, and many of us live in one all our days, and do not know that there is any need of ventilation or that the air is not perfectly sweet. The ‘deceitfulness’ of sin is its great weapon.
But what I desire to point out is an even sadder thing than that-namely, that Christian people may lose their strength because they let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declension, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds of nominal Christians amongst us, and, I dare say, of some of us. The very fact that you do not suppose the statement to have the least application to yourself is perhaps the very sign that it does apply. When the lifeblood is pouring out of a man, he faints before he dies. The swoon of unconsciousness is the condition of some professing Christians. Frost-bitten limbs are quite comfortable, and only tingle when circulation is coming back. I remember a great elm-tree, the pride of an avenue in the south, that had spread its branches for more years than the oldest man could count, and stood, leafy and green. Not until a winter storm came one night and laid it low with a crash did anybody suspect what everybody saw in the morning-that the heart was eaten out of it, and nothing left but a shell of bark. Some Christian people are like that; they manage to grow leaves, and even some fruit, but when the storm comes they will go down, because the heart has been out of their religion for years. ‘Samson wist not that the Lord was departed from him.’
And so, brother, because there are so many things that mask the ebbing away of a Christian life, and because our own self-love and habits come in to hide declension, let me earnestly exhort you and myself to watch ourselves very narrowly. Unconsciousness does not mean ignorant presumption or presumptuous ignorance. It is difficult to make an estimate of ourselves by poking into our own sentiments and supposed feelings and convictions, and the estimate is likely to be wrong. There is a better way than that. Two things tell what a man is-one, what he wants, and the other, what he does. As the will is, the man is. Where do the currents of your desires set? If you watch their flow, you may be pretty sure whether your religious life is an ebbing or a rising tide. The other way to ascertain what we are is rigidly to examine and judge what we do. ‘Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.’ Actions are the true test of a man. Conduct is the best revelation of character, especially in regard to ourselves. So let us ‘watch and be sober’-sober in our estimate of ourselves, and determined to find every lurking evil, and to drag it forth into the light.
Again, let me say, let us ask God to help us. ‘Search me, O God! and try me.’ We shall never rightly understand what we are, unless we spread ourselves out before Him and crave that Divine Spirit, who is ‘the candle of the Lord,’ to be carried ever in our hands into the secret recesses of our sinful hearts. ‘Anoint thine eyes with eye salve that thou mayest see,’ and get the eye salve by communion with God, who will supply thee a standard by which to try thy poor, stained, ragged righteousness. The collyrium, the eye salve, may be, will be, painful when it is rubbed into the lids, but it will clear the sight; and the first work of Him, whose dearest name is Comforter, is to convince of sin.
And, last of all, let us keep near to Jesus Christ, near enough to Him to feel His touch, to hear His voice, to see His face, and to carry down with us into the valley some radiance on our countenances which may tell even the world, that we have been up where the Light lives and reigns.
‘Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Shining Face of Moses
The Shining Face of Moses
v. 29. And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist (knew) not that the skin of his face shone while He (God) talked with him. This wonderful brilliancy was caused by the vision of God on Mount Sinai. A reflection of the divine glory lingered in the face of Moses for some time after his return from the mountain.
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v. 30. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. Even the reflection of the glory of the Lord is too much for sinners.
v. 31. And Moses called unto them, encouraged first the leaders of the people to hear the precepts of the Lord; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him. And Moses talked with them.
v. 32. And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh, having been inspired with some measure of courage by the action of the rulers; and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai, all the people thus hearing Jehovah’s precepts, with which He had again established the covenant.
v. 33. And till Moses had done speaking with them, while he was laying the ordinances of the Lord before them, he put a veil on his face.
v. 34. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, in the tent and afterwards in the Tabernacle, he took the veil off until he came out. And he came out and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded; he transmitted to them the Lord’s commandments.
v. 35. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone, the splendor being renewed whenever Moses appeared before the Lord. And Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with Him. This splendor of Moses’ face symbolized the glory of the Mosaic office, 2Co 3:5 if. Since the Law was the Word of God, it also had a glory. But the glory of the New Testament office, that of the Gospel, exceeds it in beauty. For the Law is the letter that killeth, but the Gospel is the spirit that maketh alive. And the glory of the Old Testament passed away, while the glory of the Gospel remains forever. All fear and terror is driven out of the heart by the comforting assurances of the Gospel, by its promises of life and salvation.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 had become radiant
had become radiant
"had started to shine"
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came up to him
"approached him" or "went to him." They did not go up the mountain.
translationWords
Moses
Sinai
covenant
God
Aaron
Israel
fear
call
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 34:29-35 Moses, who had asked to see the glory…
34:29-35 Moses, who had asked to see the glory of God, wasn’t aware that his own face reflected that glory.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.