Ex. 34:29-35 First Cut

1) Paul refers to this passage in one of the NT readings for today, but, as usual, he does some remarkable gymnastics with it. While we would see this as special pleading, it does fit wonderfully with the end of last week's Is. 6 reading.

2) Being veiled is a more provocative image now with our awareness of Muslim attitudes toward women combined with cultural views.

3) Recall that this is the second trip up to Sinai, after the golden Calf episode.

4) Holiness has an element of awestruck fear connected to it, the often quoted dynamite of Annie Dillard in  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. This radiance could strike us as a transfer of sorts (thanks to famed exegete Mick Saunders, CLP, Trinity, Rushville) of divine radiance.

5) to get at this sense of holiness as beyond common touch, this is the place where qaran means shone (LXX has glorified) and not horn the root means to shoot out like a horn, or I suppose, a beam of light) and masweh =veil is the only occurrence.

6) here Moses is a vehicle of glory. of course, Christ is the vehicle of God's glory, indeed, its embodiment.

7) In the 2/9 Christian Century Adam Thomas says that the face of Moses shone because God saw him. His little piece there plays with the image of light and sight. He has a vision of a sort of original righteousness that gets defaced or dirtied by sins of omission as well as commission.