Each prophet saw God differently. Amos saw Him standing — "I saw the Lord standing beside the altar" (Amos 9:1). Isaiah saw Him sitting — "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and exalted" (Isaiah 6:1). Moses saw Him as a warrior — "The Lord is a man of war" (Exodus 15:3). Daniel saw Him as an elder — "His hair was like pure wool, His throne like fiery flames" (Daniel 7:9). Four prophets. Four visions. Four different depictions of the same divine reality.
The rabbis did not see contradiction here. They saw precision. God reveals Himself in the mode the prophet and the moment require. To a people at war, He appears as a warrior. To a prophet addressing a kingdom in collapse, He appears as a judge enthroned. To a young visionary in Babylon, He appears as an ancient one, patient and unchanging. The revelation is always true — and always partial. No single vision contains God. The collection of visions together approaches something closer to the whole.
Abraham at the tent of Mamre received a different kind of revelation — God came to him not as a vision but as a visitation, in the heat of the day, in the form of three guests (Genesis 18:1). The rabbis connect this to (Isaiah 66:2): God looks to "the poor and afflicted spirit, and the one who trembles at My words." Abraham had just been circumcised at ninety-nine. He was sitting in pain. And God came to visit him. The greatest prophet of all is not the one who sees the grandest vision — it is the one God comes to check on when they are suffering.