Did God show his face to Moses?

[ficino]

Exodus 33:11: "The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another" (NAB).
Numbers 12:8 "... face to face I speak to him [Moses], plainly and not in riddles. The presence of the Lord he beholds."
Deut. 34:10 "Since then no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."

But Ex. 33:18 "Then Moses said, 'Do let me see your glory!' He answered, 'I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, "Lord": ... but my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives.'" God goes on to tell Moses that he will set him in a hollow of a rock, cover him with his hand, pass by, and then remove his hand, "'so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen.'"

I am assuming that "face" in these verses translates the same Hebrew noun. Is there sound exegetical basis, other than desire to obviate contradiction, for holding that "face" in the three verses at the top has a different, perhaps metaphorical sense, than it has in Ex. 33:20 and 23? Is "speak face to face" used in Hebrew as an idiom for "have intimate conversation," where "face" cannot have a literal signification?

I'm wondering, in other words, whether there is a contradiction here.

[GakuseiDon]

To me, the oddity is Moses actually being able to see the back of God.

But you can see the thought behind the 'face to face' meeting in Ex 33:

• Exd 33:9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses...
  11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

So the 'face to face' meeting is between Moses and the cloudy pillar which is a manifestation of God, and not between Moses and God Himself. That's consistent with God's 'face to face' meetings elsewhere.

HOWEVER: Moses then goes on to complain that he isn't seeing God Himself. So God says:

• Exd 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
  21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
  22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
  23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

It's hard to get around the people of that time having an idea that the real form of God had "back parts" and a hand, much less a face. It implies some kind of limitation on God. (Compare with the story of Semele wanting to see the real form of Zeus, which ends in her death, since the real form of Zeus was something like lightning bolts.) There are other passages in the OT where God appears to have a body, though some of those might be explained as manifestations of God rather than a real form.

[ficino]

• Exd 33:9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses...
  11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

So the 'face to face' meeting is between Moses and the cloudy pillar which is a manifestation of God, and not between Moses and God Himself. That's consistent with God's 'face to face' meetings elsewhere.

Interesting point. So you're suggesting that in 33:9-11 and perhaps other passages except 33:20ff, "face to face" is metaphorical? If you're right that Moses only beheld God shrouded in the cloud in 33:9-11, then "face to face" at that point cannot be construed literally, as it has to be in the later passage. The other possibility would seem to be that God did reveal his face out of the cloud to Moses in 33:9-11, and there is just some incoherence in the larger context.

I had thought of Zeus and Semele, too - less ambiguous in that myth, I think!

[GakuseiDon]

I don't think "metaphorical" is the right word. Zeus took on human form and bumped uglies with Semele. That wasn't a metaphorical copulation, but something that happened in real life, according to the story. It actually was Zeus doing the copulating. If you like, Zeus did have 'face to face' sex with Semele, but he wasn't in his godly 'glory' form at the time.

So I suggest that Exodus has Moses meeting 'face to face' with a manifestation of God. It actually is God he is talking to, and talking like you would talk to someone else, with conversation going backwards and forwards. But it wasn't God in His godly form, just as Zeus wasn't in his godly form when having sex with Semele. That's pretty clear in Exodus, since after that 'face to face' meeting, it then has Moses asking to see the REAL figure of God. What I think is meant in Exodus by a 'face to face' meeting is that Moses didn't have a vision or a dream, he actually did meet a physical manifestation of God in real life. But Moses knew that it wasn't God in all His glory, and so, like Semele, he asked to see the real thing.

[stephan happy huller]

The solution that Jews and Samaritans always pointed to here - the original position and interpretation of the Pentateuch - was that there was a second god (or really 'third' god) who could be seen. The Samaritans call him 'the glory' or sometimes 'man' eesh. The discussion happens over and over again in the rabbinic literature. Any good source will cite them for you. The authorities noticed that God speaks about another figure in the third person throughout. Monotheism - or perhaps better yet 'monarchianism' - was imposed on the reading of the Pentateuch in the Common Era. Before that 'God' and 'Lord' and the angel were three different beings. Christianity was such a problem for Judaism in the period 70 - 150 CE that the understanding was basically jettisoned. When the understanding returned the second god was called Metatron. But the real controversial question in the period before the end of the second century was whether or not the mediator angel figure could act independently of the Lord. The short answer was yes, and Christianity emphasized that before rise of monarchianism in the late second century. That's why Marcionitism is properly seen as a Jewish sect. It was just the so-called 'two powers in heaven' doctrine made known to the Gentiles.

[stephan happy huller]

When Moses saw the 'glory' he was called 'the man of God' (Deut 33.1) because the heavenly angel was himself called 'ish ha'Elohim.'

Man of God = Ish ha-Elohim = Ishu = Ish (man) + u (his) = God's Man

In short, there always was a heavenly angel called 'Man' in the Jewish tradition.

You can have Jesus the teacher or whatever historical nonsense you want to make up or believe in, but when Christians go into communion with their god they commune with Ishu the original Jewish 'second god,' the figure who made Moses divine, and wrestled with Jacob and sat under a tree talking to Abraham.

[Andrew]

Pardon my potentially stupid question, but is this then the origin of the Trinitarian God of the Christians or did that idea come about independently?

[stephan happy huller]

According to my understanding or re-formulation of the idea - yes and no. The Marcionites had three principle gods - the good god, the just god and the Devil. The first two gods seem to correspond to Elohim and Yahweh. But the mediator divinity seems to occupy a place between the good god and the just god. In short, it's not as well defined early on.

[GakuseiDon]

The solution that Jews and Samaritans always pointed to here - the original position and interpretation of the Pentateuch - was that there was a second god (or really 'third' god) who could be seen. The Samaritans call him 'the glory' or sometimes 'man' eesh. The discussion happens over and over again in the rabbinic literature. Any good source will cite them for you. The authorities noticed that God speaks about another figure in the third person throughout. Monotheism - or perhaps better yet 'monarchianism' - was imposed on the reading of the Pentateuch in the Common Era.

That might be the case well after Exodus was first recorded, but a literal reading does seem to be that God meets Moses 'face to face' as a cloudy pillar, having a chat with Moses, and then later shows the back parts of HIs real self.

[ficino]

In Ex. 33:18-23, the divine speaker speaks of his glory or beauty going before Moses. It sounds as though Moses is going to behold the "back" of the glory that passes before him. So who is speaking? Stephan, is the speaker God Himself, i.e. the first god, speaking about the second god, who can be seen? From what you said above, I would have thought that Moses is communing throughout with this second god, and that the first god would never be in direct interaction with any human.

Gakusei Don's construal seems to fit the text of Exodus just by itself, not as seen through later commentary.

Edited to add:

1. I understand that the Hebrew for "face" also appears in 33:14, "my face will go with you." Some translations render this as "my presence," and the NAB has "I myself."
2. Does the Hebrew in Numbers 12:8 literally say "face to face" or "mouth to mouth"? Later in that verse, "the presence of the Lord he beholds." - is "presence" literally "face"?
3. At Ex. 24:9-11, Moses, Aaron, Nadah, Abihu and 70 elders "beheld the God of Israel. Under his feet there appeared to be sapphire tilework, as clear as the sky itself. Yet he did not smite these chosen Israelites. After gazing on God, they could still eat and drink."
What pieces of God's anatomy did they get to see? The danger that is intimated in these verses make it sound as though they saw that which Moses was not allowed to see in Ex. 34. But that need not follow.
This description of the attendance of all 74 guys omits the distinction made in God's words at the beginning of Ex. 24, where Moses is told to take the aforementioned guys, and "You shall all worship at some distance, but Moses alone is to come close to the Lord; the others shall not come too near."
4. Gen. 32:30-31 makes a similar intimation of danger in Jacob's words, "I have seen God face to face... yet my life has been spared."
5. Ex 23 on the other hand talks of God's sending an angel before the people. Cf. things that Stephan said above.

Right now I'm thinking:
a. different pieces of legend, which share some beliefs about God but encode some differences in the telling, have been stitched together in Exodus;
b. spinning off what GakuseiDon suggested, maybe the operative image in Ex. 33-34 is that of God's "real" form enshrouded in cloud. Moses is able to endure speaking to God "face to face" (or "mouth to mouth," as in Numbers 12?) because God covers himself/his face with the cloud. In 34:19-23 God passes by, not covered by the cloud.

The notion of a God more hidden than the visible God sounds almost neo-Platonic (I'm not claiming it is so).