Hello Pastor John!!!
Studying…studying…studying…! This has perplexed me:
How do I reconcile the verses of
Genesis 32:30 and
Exodus 24:10 and
Exodus 33:11 and
Exodus 33:v18-23
with 1st John 4:12?????
We presume that NO MAN or WOMAN has ever seen the face of God, as John wrote. Yet, God appeared (as a messenger) to Jacob at Penuel; and in His glory to the elders of Israel in 24:10; and to Moses in the subsequent verses above. It even says “face to face” in Ex 33!!!
Can you clarify?
Brad
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Hi Brad!
Learning these things is exciting, isn’t it?
First, let’s consider Genesis 32:30, where Jacob wrestles an angel. Here is our translation of that verse:
Genesis 32
- And Jacob called the name of the place Penuel (1) because he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life was spared.” (2)
Let me point out that Jacob also said that seeing his fierce brother Esau (after 20 long years) was like seeing the face of God:
Genesis 33
- And Esau said, “I have much, my brother; keep what is yours for yourself.”
- And Jacob said, “No, please! I pray, if I have found favor in your eyes, take my gift from my hand because I have seen your face, as seeing the face of God, and you are pleased with me.
At Penuel, Jacob was so overwhelmed by his experience of wrestling all night with an angel, that he described it as seeing God face-to-face, but that is not what happened, any more than Jacob had seen the face of God when he met Esau. In a previous verse (Gen. 32:24), we are told that “a man wrestled with him until dawn.” But it wasn’t a man, either. The apostle John revealed to us that angels are, in general, the size of humans (Rev. 21:17), and anyone who has actually seen an angel knows. This is one reason the Bible sometimes refers to them as men, as in Genesis 18:2, but even there, the three “men” who visited Abraham are later revealed to be angels (Gen. 19:1), and one of them is even called Jehovah Himself (Gen. 18:22–33)!
But to get back to Jacob’s wrestling partner, the prophet Hosea got it right when he said that Jacob “contended with an angel and overcame” (Hos. 12:4).
Now, for Exodus 24:10
Exodus 24
- Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up.
- And they saw the God of Israel, and under His feet was something like a paved work of sapphire as pure as the sky itself.
- Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the chief men of the sons of Israel; they beheld God, and they ate and drank.
The controlling factor for any scripture in any book which speaks of someone seeing God, such as the following from Exodus 33, is what God Himself told Moses in Exodus 33:18–20:
Exodus 33
- And he said, “I pray, show me your glory.”
- And He said, “I will make all my goodness pass over before you, and I will proclaim ‘Jehovah’ by name before you. Moreover, I will show favor to whom I will show favor, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”
- But He said, “You cannot see my face, for no man sees me and lives.”
This is what John meant in 1John 4:12 when he wrote “No one has ever seen God”. Moses saw God (from behind):
Exodus 33
- And Jehovah said, “There is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. 22. And it shall come to pass, as my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I pass by.
- Then, I will take my hand away, and you will see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
Isaiah saw God:
Isaiah 6
- In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
Amos saw God:
Amos 9
- I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and he said….
Others also saw God; however, none of them saw His face. Otherwise, they would have died; God said so! So, those verses mean only that those men were brought into the very presence of the Lord. (3)
By the way, someone may ask you a question about John 1:18, for in most translations, that verse is very similar to 1John 4:12. However, we chose to translate it this way: “No one has ever understood God; the unique Son who is next to the Father (4) made Him known.”
Finally, in Exodus 33:11, the phraseology is admittedly arresting, but what the write meant is only that Moses was in the very presence of God. The event that is being described is Moses’ occasional, private entrance into the Most Holy to speak alone with God, which no other man was ever again allowed to do. There with Moses in that holy place, God would audibly speak with Moses from between the cherubim which were built into the two ends of the mercy seat which covered the ark of the covenant within the Most Holy Place. (5)
Exodus 33
11. And Jehovah spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then he returned to the camp, but his minister, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent.
Here is what that verse is talking about:
Exodus 33
- And Moses took the tent and pitched it outside of the camp, removing it from the camp. And he called it the tent of meeting, and everyone who sought Jehovah went out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.
- And it came to pass, when Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood, each at the entrance of his tent, and they watched Moses until he went into the tent.
- And it came to pass, when Moses went into the tent, a pillar of cloud came down and stood at the entrance of the tent, and He talked with Moses.
- And all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, and all the people rose and bowed down, each at the entrance of his tent.
- And Jehovah spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then he returned to the camp, but his minister, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent.
I hope that clears things up. Please let me know if I can do more. And do pass on my love to those studying these holy things of God with you.
Love you all.
Pastor John
Footnotes:
(1) That is, face of God
(2) All translations are ours unless otherwise noted
(3) It is interesting that in both Isaiah and Amos’ cases, the person they saw was the “Lord”, not the 3 “LORD”. Many times in the prophets, when they were moved to say “Lord” instead of “LORD” – and unbeknownst to them, of course – the Spirit was referring to the hidden Son, not to the Father. Jesus referred to one such case in Matthew 22:41–45, quoting Ps. 110:1.
(4) Literally, “in the bosom of the Father”, a Greek idiom meaning “next to” or “close to”. See 4 13:23.
(5) About a dozen times in the Old Testament, God is said to “dwell between the cherubim” (e.g., 5 1Sam. 4:4; Ps. 80:1; etc.). And in Exodus 25:20, and 22, when God was telling Moses to built the tabernacle, He said, “the wings of the cherubim shall be spread out above, their wings overshadowing the mercy-seat, with their faces one toward the other. The faces of the cherubim shall face the mercy-seat…. And I shall meet with you there between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony, and I shall speak to you from above the mercy-seat all that I command you for the children of Israel.”