Page Content (OCR)
304 weh hath spoken unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire, ye saw no visage of any kind:" Ye came near and stood at the foot of the Mount, and the Mount was engulfed with fire reaching unto the midst of heaven, and [there was] a dark cloud and thick fog. And Yahweh spoke unto you from inside the fire; ye heard the sound of the words, but the likeness of a visage ye saw not— only a voice was heard. This, obviously, was an essential element in the do's and don'ts of close encounters with Yahweh. But now that the relenting God was talking to Moses "face to face"—but still from within the cloud-pillar—Moses seized the moment to seek a reaffirmation of his role as the leader chosen by the Lord. "Show me thy face!" he begged of the Lord. Answering enigmatically, Yahweh said: "Thou canst not see my face, for no Man can see Me and live." So Moses pleaded again: "Please, show me thy glory!" And Yahweh said: "Behold, there is a place by me; go and stand there upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass by there, I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by; and I will then remove my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen." The Hebrew word that has been rendered "glory" in En- glish translations, in all the above quoted instances, is Kabod; it stems from the root KBD whose seminal meaning is "weighty, heavy." Literally then, Kabod would mean "the heaviness, the weighty thing." That a "thing," a physical object and not an abstract "glory" is meant when applied to Yahweh is clear from its first mention in the Bible, when the Israelites "beheld the Kabod of Yahweh," enveloped by the ubiquitous cloud, after the Lord supplied them miraculously with Manna as their daily food. In Exodus 24:16 we read that DIVINE ENCOUNTERS (Deuteronomy 4:11-15)