Commentaria in Exodum
21. BEHOLD, HE SAID, THERE IS A PLACE WITH ME, AND THOU SHALT STAND UPON THE ROCK. 22. AND WHEN MY GLORY SHALL PASS, I WILL SET THEE IN A HOLE OF THE ROCK, AND PROTECT THEE WITH MY RIGHT HAND TILL I PASS: 23. AND I WILL TAKE AWAY MY HAND, AND THOU SHALT SEE MY BACK PARTS: BUT MY FACE THOU CANST NOT SEE.—St. Augustine, Question 154 on Exodus, denies that a bodily appearance of God or of an angel was here promised by God or seen by Moses, but holds that it was mere prophecy, because we do not read that Moses afterwards actually saw God bodily. The back parts of God seen by Moses, he thinks, are the mysteries of Christ believed by the Jews after his ascension. For when Peter preached they said: What shall we do? and were baptized, and received the Holy Ghost, Acts 2:37; and finally at the end of the world all Israel shall be saved. Cajetan follows St. Augustine, saying: A thing to be done is not promised, but it is a parable: the rock signifies the erect and fixed mind by which Moses was raised to know God intelligibly; the hand of God applied to the rock signifies that certain attributes were veiled from him, and only those shown which God willed to show him, through his hand as through a transparent light. But this is a mystical sense. It is certain that literally there is promised to Moses a vision of God, that is, of the angel, vicar of God, in an assumed body, and that it actually befell him will be plain from the next chapter, verses 5 and 6. Further, that this rock is the very one from which Moses at God’s command drew water for the people, Exod. 17:6, St. Augustine here, Question 154, holds, so that the water from the rock in Sinai flowed four miles to Raphidim, where the camp of the Hebrews was. Fernandius holds the same, vision 7, sect. 2, who adds also that this rock accompanied the Hebrews in the desert for forty years, either by itself or by the flow of water. But these things are uncertain.
Allegorically, the rock is the solidity of the Church and of the faith, without which no one can know God, of which Christ to Peter, Matt. 16: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” So Theodoret and St. Gregory, book 35 of the Morals, chap. 6: Nyssen, however: “Christ,” he says, “is to those running a place and a way, to the weak a stone, to those resting a house.” Moreover St. Thomas, 2–2, Question 171, art. 2, thinks that by the application of the hand to the hole is signified the manner in which the prophetic light is communicated to the Prophets, only so far, namely, as God wills. Whence the Prophets often say: The hand of the Lord was upon me; because the prophetic light is not permanent, nor full, but passing, and tempered by the hand of God. This is mystical, as I said a little before in the exposition of Cajetan, who seems to have drawn it from St. Thomas. The Rabbis feign that on the back of God were written his epithets: “Ruler, Lord God, merciful,” etc., which are recounted in chap. 34, verse 6.
God says, therefore: In Sinai there is a hollow rock, in whose cavity thou canst lie hid, O Moses, and which can be covered in front; I will therefore place thee in it, and cover thee with a cloud, until my glorious face pass, and then I will remove the cloud, that thou mayest see my back parts, that is, my back; for my face thou canst not see without being at once deprived of life by the splendours of my majesty flashing from it. That it was so done is plain from chap. 34, verses 5 and 6.
22. AND PROTECT THEE WITH MY RIGHT HAND TILL I PASS,—as if to say: With my right hand I will apply and set a cloud, or other opaque body, to the cave in which thou shalt lie hid, O Moses, that thou see not the glory of my face passing before thee, and die.
23. AND I WILL TAKE AWAY MY HAND, AND THOU SHALT SEE MY BACK PARTS,—as if to say: When my face shall have passed, I will remove the cloud which covers thee in the cave, that thou mayest behold my back. Hence it seems that this body in which God appeared to Moses was composed not by an angel but by God alone, and adorned in front with so great a light that it far surpassed the sun: in the back, however, this light was so tempered that the sight of Moses could bear it, and be wonderfully refreshed by it; yet the face of Moses was so sprinkled and suffused with this light that it began to shine and to be horned, as I shall say in the next chapter.
I say that this lucid body was formed by God alone, not by an angel, because it is not likely that angels can by themselves immediately produce light, or amass so much light as to be compared to the sun.
Note: This lucid body, so composed by God, the angel entered and put on, and moved it, that it might pass before the cave in which Moses lay hid.
Secondly, this angel was the same as he who led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and went before in the pillar of cloud, and who then presided over the people and the Synagogue, but now presides over the Church, namely St. Michael.
That this is the literal sense of this place the whole series of the discourse declares; likewise that in the next chapter, verses 5 and 6, the Lord, fulfilling what he here promises Moses, truly and bodily passes before Moses, showing him his back. In some like manner St. Pachomius with bodily eyes saw the glory of the Lord, as his Life relates.
Allegorically, however, this sense is the more important, and more intended by the Holy Ghost. Whence St. Augustine, Question 154, says that here is a prophecy of Christ: for the face of the Lord signifies the divinity of Christ: this the Jews did not see when they crucified Christ, but after Christ passed through death and resurrection to the Father; then many of them saw these his back parts, and believed.
Tropologically Nyssen: In this life, he says, we cannot see God; yet he sees the back parts of God who stands upon the rock, that is Christ, and who with heart and mind always follows God whithersoever he leads, according to that of the Psalmist: “My soul hath stuck close to thee: thy right hand hath received me”; and of Christ: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.” Again: “Come, follow me.” For to follow God with mind, will and action, always and everywhere whithersoever he leads, is itself to see God.
Symbolically, the back parts of God are the effects and creatures of God, from which alone it is granted to Moses and to us in this life to behold God. So Philo, Anastasius in the Questions on Holy Scripture, Question 23; Irenaeus, book 4, chap. 37, Hilary on Psalm 111. “From the perpetuity of creatures,” says St. Augustine, “the eternal Creator is understood, from their greatness the omnipotent, from their order and disposition the wise, from their government the good.”
Symbolically also, others think that there is here foreshown and promised to Moses the vision of the humanity of Christ in the transfiguration on mount Thabor; for the humanity is the lower and posterior part of Christ, the divinity the prior and more excellent. So Tertullian, book 4 Against Marcion, chap. 22; Nazianzen, oration 2 On Theology; Origen here, hom. 12, and hom. 7 Trinity, chap. 18, and Bernard, sermon 61 on the Canticle.
Again St. Ambrose on Psalm 18:24: Moses, he says, saw the back parts of Christ; he saw his splendour as he is man, he saw the glory of his passion, by which he repaired for us the kingdom of heaven. Whence Fernandius, vision 7, sect. 3, gathers that Moses saw Christ scourged and crowned with thorns, such as Pilate showed him to the people, saying: “Behold the man”; likewise that he saw him fixed to the cross. Whence he exclaimed, chap. 34, verse 6: “Merciful and gracious, and of much compassion,” etc. And that St. Peter alluded to this, epist. 1, chap. 1, verse 11, when he says that the Prophets by the Spirit of God foretold “the sufferings that are in Christ, and the glories that should follow,” where he signifies the same, as if to say: The sufferings of Christ are his later glories, which were shown to Moses in the glorious back of the Lord. But this is symbolic and mystical, not literal, and therefore uncertain and conjectural.
From what has been said it is plain that by no means can it be gathered from this chapter that Moses saw the divine essence; for Moses did not ask it, nor, if he asked, did he obtain it. For the Lord expressly answers him and says: “Thou canst not see my face”; and this is the opinion of almost all the other Fathers, whom L. Molina, Valentia and others cite, part 1, Question 12.