Page Content (OCR)
303 forgiven, let me alone bear the punishment, he said; let it be me who is "blotted out of the book" of life. But the Lord was not fully appeased, keeping the option of further retribu- tion; "Whosoever hath sinned against me, indeed from my book shall be blotted out." the "And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned." Moses himself, discouraged and _ despairing, picked up his tent and pitched it outside the encampment, far off from the camp. "And when Moses left for the tent, all the people rose up and stood every one at the door of his tent, and watched Moses go, until he would enter the tent." A sense of a failed mission pervaded him and them all. But then a miracle happened; Yahweh's compassion be- nen ne Le heard these evil Moses and when Moses was entering the tent, that the pillared cloud descended, and stood at the entrance of the tent, And when the people, all of them, saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, the whole people rose up and prostrated themselves, each at his tent's entrance. And Yahweh spoke unto Moses face to face, as a man would speak unto his friend. When the Lord spoke to Moses from inside the Burning Bush, "Moses covered his face, for he was afraid to look at the Elohim." The Elders and nobles who had accompanied Moses up the Mount, went up only halfway and were enabled to see only the Lord's footrest—and even then it was a won- der that they were not smitten. At the end of the forty years of wandering, as the Israelites were ready to enter Canaan, Moses in his testamental review of the Exodus and the great af an mL... ow the WL AL rn: The Greatest Theophany "And when came manifest: And it came to pass, en 0 ren and a voice spoke to Moses. Theophany made a point of stressing that "on the day Yah-