18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

Moses now asks that he might see the Lord’s glory but is told that no one will be able to see His face and live. This passage is a bit confusing, because when Moses first came into the tabernacle, we were told that he spoke with God “face to face.” Some have tried to dismiss the earlier “face to face” reference as not being literal, as only meaning “forthright and openly.” That seems like an unnatural interpretation to me, though. It isn’t derived from the original Greek and only seems to be proposed to try and make amends with today’s verses.

I, however, wonder if this seeming inconsistency is actually pointing towards different degrees of divine manifestation. When Moses conversed with the Lord here in the tabernacle, did he perceive the Lord spiritually as opposed to literally? Was it something like a vision, such as Stephen had when he perceived both God the Father and Jesus Christ at the time of his martyrdom? Was Moses requesting to see God’s form in the flesh, and was learning that His presence could only be tolerated spiritually, as any physical manifestation would be fatal?

Something that supports the idea that Moses was referring to a different sort of appearance than what was going on in the tabernacle is that this was a preliminary conversation between him and the Lord. Immediately following this account, Moses will travel back up into the mountain, where he and the Lord will again confirm everything that has been agreed on here. So, given that this is the pre-agreement before the formal contract, it makes sense that it could also be a spiritual presence before the physical, and different rules would apply for each.