Exodus 33:12–23
Moses’ Intercession
12 Moses said to the LORD, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the LORD said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
(ESV)
Hide and Seek
Hide-and-seek is a favorite children’s game. I can remember playing it as a child, finding tight hideaways where no one could reach me—including the time my father, at my request, wrapped me in a blanket and lifted me onto the very top shelf of a closet. I also have memories, now two decades old, of playing with our own children when they were young—helping them tuck into a quiet, hidden place, scrunched small, trying to breathe as quietly as they could.
Throughout the Old Testament, God is hidden from view. In fact, in our passage today, God tells Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Pause for a moment and consider God’s holiness—His power, His sheer majesty. If we were to behold Him with our eyes—our breath, our souls, our very life would leave our bodies. We would be undone.
Yet we need His presence. This is exactly what Moses is pleading for: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people?” (Exodus 33:15–16).
And God is clear: Moses shall not and cannot set eyes upon God Himself—even when he asks to see God’s glory.
This is why the New Testament’s claim is so astonishing: “We have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). When people beheld Christ—born in Bethlehem, teaching in the temple, walking along the Sea of Galilee—they were seeing God.
In Jesus, God is hidden no more. And one day, we will see Him face to face.
Jon M. Dennis