Parshat Ki Tisa6 min read

God Refused Moses the Sight of His Face Until Moses Was Dying

After the golden calf, God said He would send an angel instead of coming Himself. The people heard it, took off their ornaments, and never put them back on.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Camp That Stripped Itself
  2. The Bargain Moses Would Not Drop
  3. Show Me Your Glory
  4. What They Saw at the Mountain and What He Told Them They Had Not Seen
  5. The Sight He Was Given at the End
God Refused Moses the Sight of His Face Until Moses Was Dying Click for full size

The Camp That Stripped Itself

The message came down while the gold was still being swept up. Go up from here to the land I promised. I will send an angel ahead of you and drive out the nations. But My Presence will not travel among you, because you are a stiff-necked people, and if I went with you for one hour I would destroy you on the road.

The people heard it and stopped where they stood. Nobody put on his ornaments that morning, or the morning after. They took off what they had been given at the mountain and left it off.

Moses pulled up a tent and carried it outside the camp, well out, past the last line of cookfires, and pitched it there. Anyone who wanted instruction had to walk out to it in the open. And when Moses went out to it, the whole camp came to its feet. Every man stood in the door of his own tent and watched him cross the empty ground until the flap closed behind him.

Then the column of cloud came down and stood in the doorway, and inside, God spoke with him word for word, the way a man speaks with the friend beside him. The people saw the column standing there and bowed, each one where he was. Only Joshua, a young man, would not leave the tent afterward.

The Bargain Moses Would Not Drop

Inside, Moses pressed.

"You tell me to take this people up, and You have not told me who You are sending with me. You said You know me by name and I have found mercy with You."

"My Presence will go, and I will give you rest."

"If Your Presence does not go among us, do not move us from here." He would not let it go at that. "How will anyone know that I and Your people have found mercy? How is Israel to be told apart from every other people on the face of the earth, except that You walk with us?"

"This thing you have asked, I will do."

He had won it. The Presence would travel. And having won, he asked for the thing no one had asked for.

Show Me Your Glory

"Show me, I pray, Your Glory."

"I will make all My goodness pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the Name before you, and I will be gracious to whom I am gracious." Then the refusal, flat and without softening. "You cannot see the face of My Presence. No man can see Me and stay alive."

There was a place prepared. Moses climbed onto the rock and stood where he was told to stand. A hollow opened in the stone and he was put inside it, and something came over the opening and shut out the light while the Glory went past. He felt it go. When it was gone the covering lifted, and he was permitted to look, and he saw what was behind it going away from him.

He came down the mountain with his face throwing off light he could not see and the people could not look at.

What They Saw at the Mountain and What He Told Them They Had Not Seen

Forty years later, on the plains east of the Jordan, he made them go over it again.

"Guard your souls very carefully," he told them. "You saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire."

They had been there. They had stood in the smoke with the mountain shaking and the voice coming out of it, and now the old man was telling them that whatever they had seen, they had not seen a shape. He had reason to press. At the sea, God had come at them like a soldier in the middle of a battle. At the mountain He had come like an elder heavy with mercy. Two arrivals, two faces, and men were already muttering that there might be two powers behind them. So the first words at the mountain had settled it before anyone could start. I am the Lord your God. The same one at the water, the same one in the fire.

What the people had was a vision, and a vision is a thing lent for an hour. Build a picture out of it, hammer it into gold, and you are back at the calf by a longer road.

The Sight He Was Given at the End

He never got the face. That was the cost of standing closer than anyone, and he paid it for forty years, arguing at a curtain of cloud with his own eyes shut against the thing he most wanted.

What he had been promised was the back, and the promise was filed away for the world to come, which is a long distance from a man in a rock corridor asking now.

Then he went up Nebo alone, at a hundred and twenty, to look at a country he was not going to enter. He was close enough to death for the rules to slacken. The palm was taken away. What had been kept back from him on Sinai was set in front of him there, and he saw it, and then he died on the mountain with the land below him and nobody watching.

MosesProphecyDivine PresenceTorahDeuteronomyIsraelGolden CalfShemot RabbahShechinahJoshuaAngelShekhinahHornetConquestAmoritesWildernessPharaohEnemiesExodus
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Sifrei Devarim 357:41Sifrei Devarim

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sifrei by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

The Sifrei Devarim, a collection of legal midrashim (rabbinic interpretive commentary) on the Book of Deuteronomy, offers a fascinating, almost mystical, glimpse into that pivotal moment. It centers around the phrase, "whom the L-rd knew face to face," describing Moses' unique relationship with the Divine.

What does it mean to be known "face to face"? It's not as straightforward as it seems.

The text directs us to a crucial passage in Exodus (Shemot) 33:18. Moses, yearning for deeper understanding, pleads, "Show me, I pray, Your glory." The response? A divine limitation. God tells Moses, in no uncertain terms, "You shall not be permitted to see My face."

Why? The Sifrei Devarim explains that in this world, seeing God's "face" is simply impossible. It's beyond our earthly capacity. The text suggests that the concept of "face" in this context represents a direct, unfiltered view of God's essence, something mortal eyes cannot behold.

But here's where it gets interesting. The verse continues, offering a glimmer of hope. God says, "Then I shall remove My palm, and you shall see My back."

The "back"? What does that even mean?

The Sifrei Devarim interprets this as a promise for the world to come, the Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come). In that future realm, the barriers to divine understanding will be lifted. We will see what was previously hidden. The "back" represents a glimpse of God's presence that's possible only after our earthly existence.

So, when did Moses get this glimpse? According to the Sifrei Devarim, it happened close to his death. The text draws a powerful inference: that the nearness of death allows for a heightened spiritual awareness, a veiling of the curtain between this world and the next. It suggests that in those final moments, Moses was granted a vision, a profound understanding that transcended his earthly limitations. He finally saw the “back” he was promised.

That in our final moments, a deeper truth might be revealed. That the boundaries that separate us from the Divine might thin, offering a glimpse of something greater. The story of Moses' death, as illuminated by the Sifrei Devarim, is not just about an ending, but about a transition – a passage into a realm where understanding deepens, and the face of the Divine becomes, at last, visible.

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Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah 7:18Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.138 Openings of Wisdom, trans. Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, Azamra Institute (2005) · CC-BY

At Sinai, the Israelites experienced the overwhelming presence of HaShem. But what did they actually see?

Moses, in his wisdom, warns the Israelites, “And guard your souls very much, for you did not see any form on the day that HaShem your God spoke to you at Horeb from out of the fire” (Deuteronomy 4:15). Why caution them about what they didn't see?

The sages explain that the people did see something. They experienced a vision, a prophetic glimpse into the Divine. But it was crucial that they understood its true nature. The warning was against letting that vision lead them astray. They needed to recognize it as a representation, a symbolic manifestation, and not a literal depiction of God.

The Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, a Kabbalistic text, emphasizes this point. It suggests that the vision was meant to be understood on a deeper level, beyond the immediate sensory experience. The Israelites were "warned not to allow what they saw to cause them to err."

This idea echoes in the Mechilta, a collection of early rabbinic interpretations of the Book of Exodus. There, the rabbis point out that God revealed Himself differently at the splitting of the Red Sea than at the Giving of the Torah. At the sea, He appeared as Zeir Anpin, often associated with might and power. Yet, at Sinai, He appeared in His attribute of kindness, Arich Anpin. These are both sefirot, aspects of the Divine, that are revealed to us at different times.

So why the different "faces" of God? The Mechilta explains that the verse "I am HaShem your God" (Exodus 20:2) is there "so as not to leave room to say there are two domains…" In other words, these different manifestations, different visions, aren't evidence of multiple deities or separate powers. They are different facets of the same, singular God.

As Ginzberg beautifully retells it in Legends of the Jews, the key is understanding the "underlying truth" of what they saw. This is not about denying the reality of the vision, but about interpreting it correctly. We can't take these visions as literal, concrete realities. Instead, we must strive to understand what they represent, what they reveal about the nature of God and our relationship with Him.

The challenge, then, is to hold onto the awe and wonder of these experiences while maintaining a clear understanding of their symbolic nature. It's a delicate balance between faith and reason, between the seen and the unseen. And perhaps, in that very tension, lies the essence of true understanding.

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Targum Onkelos, Exodus 33Targum Onkelos

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English Targum translation · Public Domain

The Hebrew Bible records Moses making the most audacious request in Scripture: "Show me Your glory" (Exodus 33:18). Targum Onkelos renders the response with his most careful theological language: "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live" (Exodus 33:20).

First, the crisis. God tells Moses to leave Sinai and head for the Promised Land, but adds a devastating qualifier: "I will not go up among you" (Exodus 33:3). Onkelos renders this as "My Shechinah will not go up among you." It is not God who is absent. God is everywhere. But the concentrated, palpable divine Presence that had accompanied Israel through the wilderness will be withdrawn. The people mourn. They remove their ornaments, the crowns they received at Sinai.

Moses sets up the Tent of Meeting outside the camp. When he enters, the Pillar of Cloud descends and God speaks to him "face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend" (Exodus 33:11). Onkelos renders this as "word to word", not face-to-face in a physical sense, but a direct, unmediated verbal communication. Intimacy without anthropomorphism.

Then Moses's great request. "Let me know Your way" (Exodus 33:13). Onkelos adds: "the way of Your goodness." Moses is not asking for philosophical knowledge of God's nature. He is asking to understand God's kindness, how divine mercy operates in the world. God responds: "My Presence will go, and I will accede to your request" (Exodus 33:14). Onkelos: "My Shechinah will go." The crisis is resolved. The Divine Presence will return. Moses's prayer succeeds where the people's idolatry failed, not through gold and fire, but through words spoken friend to friend.

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