Shalom my dearest sisters and brothers,
We will soon be coming up to Theophany Day, when we celebrate nothing less than the manifestation of the Glory of God on Mt Horeb (‘the Theophany’), and the giving of the Torah. This year, it is due to fall on the 21st to 22nd of June 2023 – the anniversary of the actual date given in Torah (the third day after the third New Moon after the departure from Egypt, i.e. the 3rd of Tammuz, Ex 19:1, & Ex 19:11). In everything I have written below, I am trying to get across to you the sheer magnitude, power and importance of what happened on that day, 3,469 years ago.
In Torah, there is an aspect of God that is referred to as God’s Glory (Hebrew: כבוד kavodh). In other parts of the Hebrew Bible, this would have its regular English meaning of ‘splendour’, ‘magnificence’ or ‘triumphant fame’. However, in Torah it does not have this meaning, and as a result, its mention goes completely over most people’s heads. The ‘Glory’ is an amazing, active power of God, not a quality.
The Glory is the purifying, cleansing and healing fire of God’s Divine Radiance, which for the most part is completely invisible in our world. This is the great power that God uses to bless people, to chase away evil, and also to cleanse us completely of our sins, so that we are born again (Ps 51:10), as if we had never sinned at all. This belief in Yahwist Israelite theology is a really important and vital concept to understand, because it counters Paullist theology that says only the blood and death of ‘Christ Jesus’ can cleanse us of the blemish of sin. Instead, it is the holy power of Yahveh’s purifying Glory which cleanses us of our sins, and which restores us to spiritual wholeness – this is a vital part of Talmidi Israelite belief to grasp.
In addition to the ordained festivals, Torah allows us to have ‘days of joy’ (Num 10:10) – that is, days of religious devotion which have been chosen by individual Jewish communities to celebrate their joy in God. The eight days of Hanukkah are therefore classed as, ‘days of joy’; Theophany Day is a Talmidi ‘day of joy’ (it is therefore a non-obligatory day of prayer, a choice for each individual whether to observe the day or not).
What is Salvation?
The Theophany on Mt Horeb is the central ‘salvation event’ of the Israelite faith. In Paullist theology, ‘salvation’ means, ‘being freed from the stain of sin by the blood and death of Christ, so that Christians are always guaranteed to get into heaven.’ This varies slightly according to which Christian church that people come from, but the heart of it is the understanding that salvation is all about Christians getting into heaven.
This is the meaning that ex-Christians might still have, and be hanging onto. However, in Jewish belief, everyone will eventually get to heaven, so making everyone think that someone died to get you into a place that you’re already going to get to anyway is a bit of a con.
Now, here’s the danger with insisting on using the same vocabulary when speaking to both Christians and Jews, because the above definition is not the meaning that the word ‘salvation’ has in Judaism or the Israelite faith. Neither does ‘redemption’ mean the same thing in the two religions. When a Christian preacher speaks to Jews, he or she might use words with one meaning (the Christian one), but his or her Jewish audience will be hearing a completely different, and therefore confusing, message.
In Yahwist theology (i.e. in any Torah-based religion descended from the Israelite faith), Salvation means, ‘being delivered or rescued from a physical or spiritual danger by God, which is otherwise impossible for a human being alone to escape from’. It is this meaning of salvation under which the Theophany of Yahveh on Mt Horeb is understood as the central ‘salvation event’ of the Israelite faith, because it is the pivotal event that enabled God to make us aware, once and for all, of God’s salvation in our daily lives.
Human beings and the Garden of Eden
The spiritual lesson to be gleaned from the story of the Garden of Eden, is that there was a time when humans were in a spiritually innocent state – that is, just like all the other animals, they did not know the difference between good and evil, and so their actions did not have any moral good or evil assigned to them. When a lion kills another an animal, for example, it is not a moral evil – the lion is just doing what lions do.
What changed for humans with the disobedience, was that humans gained the knowledge to be able to discern between good and evil; they also took on the consequences of acquiring this state – that harmful actions are now considered wrong, and so since then, everyone has become answerable to God for their harmful and wrongful actions.
While humans were innocent, they could remain close to the Glory of God in Eden, without being in any danger of getting harmed by God’s Glory; they were in a complete state of innocence, and a spiritually innocent being cannot be harmed by the Glory of God.
After the disobedience, humans were in danger of being harmed by God’s Glory, so God had to make us leave Eden. Ever since then, it is the Jewish understanding that Yahveh, our God who unreservedly loves all God’s children, has been diligently trying to get us all back to ‘Eden’ – to that state of spiritual purity and innocence.
The Tabernacle and the Temple as places where Eden is recreated
The insides of the Tabernacle were embroidered with Kheruv-angels (Ex 26:1b), the same angels which were set as guardians around the tree of life in Eden (Gen 3:24), to prevent humans from gaining immortality while still in a state of incomplete spiritual development, where we would not know how to use that immortality wisely.
In addition, the walls of Solomon’s Temple were lined, not only with Kheruv-angels, but also with palm trees and lilies (1Kgs 6:29). Jewish commentators understand from these details, that God intended the Temple to be a symbolic Eden – a symbolic place of spiritual purity and innocence, because this was where the Glory of God came through, and nothing evil or wicked can survive coming so close to God’s Glory.
The Temple as a portable Mt Horeb
Before we connect Eden to Horeb, I need to connect the Tabernacle to Horeb. The Tabernacle was a place where the Glory of God could come through above the two Kheruv-angels on the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 25:22, Num 7:89). A kind of gateway or portal between heaven and earth would open up above the Ark, so that the raw power of the Glory of Yahveh could come through – a direct opening to heaven.
On Mt Horeb, a similar gateway was opened between heaven and earth, so that the Glory of Yahveh could come through. This is how the Tabernacle was like a portable Mt Horeb, because they were both places where God’s Glory could come through to our earthly realm at full strength. It wasn’t God who was being transported around in the Tabernacle, because God is everywhere. Rather, it was a doorway between heaven and earth that was being transported, that allowed God’s Presence to come through. The Presence of Yahveh in the midst of people would render them holy, and so bless them.
Why was the Theophany on Mt Horeb our ‘Salvation Event’?
Within the Jewish community, God is understood in many different ways. Maimonides (or ‘Rambam’), the famous rabbinic scholar from 12th century Spain, and the father of most modern rabbinic interpretation of the Talmud (Oral Law), rejected all literal descriptions of God’s power; for him, and for the modern rabbis who follow his interpretation, God’s power is entirely metaphorical, and not real. He had a personal dislike for mysticism, and preferred an understanding of God which was controllable and limitable.
A lot of religious people have an understanding of God which is ‘manageable’ or ‘handleable’. That is to say, a considerable number of people create a God in their own image, with human qualities and attributes; they prefer to worship a God whom they can manage themselves, take off the shelf when they need God, and put God back on the shelf once they have finished with God. When such individuals come to learn of the true extent, power and magnitude of Yahveh, they just cannot cope with such an understanding – God is far too big for them, they cannot make or shape God in their own image any more, and so they end up rejecting the true image and nature of God.
Having a human-sized face to God, as is the case in Paullist Christianity, is more manageable for some people; they subconsciously believe that only this smaller version of God can be closer to them. Being born as a baby even makes God cuddly – they can relate to that. Pagans made their gods human, because that was the only way that pagans, as mortal human beings, could relate to their gods. Their gods had superpowers, but they were nevertheless in mostly human form. Having gods in human form suits people who can only relate to gods who are like them, with human qualities.
But the God of the entire Universe is not human, and trying to explain God using merely mortal, human attributes simply diminishes God. Yahveh is not limited by our ability or inability to comprehend God. Thinking that a God who is so infinite and great cannot possibly know what it is like to be human, or even be close to us, means that such individuals have a limited view of what God is because, in truth, God is actually able to get closer to us than we could ever possibly imagine; God is closer to us than our own breathing. If God didn’t know perfectly what it was like to be human, then God wouldn’t be God!
When you read the way that the Israelites reacted to the Glory of God – ‘Glory’, not with the regular meaning of ‘splendour’, but with the meaning of, ‘the purifying, cleansing and healing fire of God’s Divine Radiance’ – how they were frightened that if they got too close, they might die – you realise that God is not a cuddly baby, or a charismatic teacher you can look up to, but rather an infinite Entity of unfathomable magnitude, a timeless Being with limitless power, who is beyond all human ability to imagine or contain.
If you are willing to accept this astonishing understanding of the nature of Yahveh – as a Being so infinitely powerful, it would be dangerous to approach in a spiritually unprepared state (like approaching a nuclear furnace without any protection) – then you will begin to get some idea of what God was actually risking by opening a doorway from heaven to earth; in revealing God’s Glory, God nearly risked everything that God loved.
The danger that God was risking towards God’s own Creation
When Yahveh our God created everything, it was an act of love towards what was created. When you read the oft-repeated formula of words, ‘And God saw the xxx, that it was good’, it means that God was beholding each and every thing that God created, with the same love that a parent has when they behold their own child for the very first time after birth.
God created human beings to be in a state of spiritual innocence, because God so loves us. And that is why it hurt God so much when humans rejected that innocence, in order to gain the knowledge of the awareness of good and evil (Gen 2:9c). Since then, God embarked on a plan to bring humanity back to the same spiritual state as we had in Eden.
Most of the time, God works within the regular physical laws of the universe. God chose not to zap the knowledge of God’s Glory into the minds of every human being, just as God chose not to undo the knowledge that those first human beings in Eden had gained – in other words, God didn’t do a mind-wipe, like they do in science-fiction films. God instead chose to work with how we are, with where we are at.
That’s why God didn’t reveal God’s nature to the entire human race all at once – what would we have done with such knowledge? It would have been just as bad as giving immortality to a deeply flawed species, while we were still drawn to being destructive, chaotic, and attracted to danger. God knew that the best way to teach the human race was to start off small – just reveal God’s Self to one person, then a group of people, then a nation, and then let that knowledge eventually filter through over the course of time to the whole of humankind.
When it got to the stage of passing on that knowledge to the entire human race, that is when God decided to up the game – to reveal a side of God’s Divine Nature that had not been revealed with such power and majesty before.
When God’s Glory passed by Moses, all that the Israelites saw and heard from where they were standing below as the mountain trembled, were peels of thunder, flashes of lightning, smoking cloud, and a deafeningly loud noise, like a loud shofar (Ex 19:16, Ex 20:18). Little did they know what was happening above them, and what could have happened. I personally believe that this unusually loud noise and the shaking, was the very fabric of space-time groaning under the strain of what God was doing to it – tearing a hole in the fabric of the universe.
What God was risking with that step – with everything that God was doing at the summit of Mt Horeb – was nothing less than the destruction of everything. Not just of the human race, but all life on Earth, and the Earth as well – the very fabric of space/time. When you come to understand the power of Yahveh exactly as the ancient Israelites did, you would realise that opening a doorway between heaven and earth risked wiping out everything.
So God took steps to ensure that didn’t happen. God ordered that people stay away from the mountain, and that only certain people be allowed up. Only Moses was allowed all the way up. And God came through in just one place, and for a limited amount of time.
What exactly happened on Mt Horeb?
If you read Ex 33:20 & Ex 33:23, these verses make it sound as if God is an alien descending in a spaceship(!)
“You cannot see My face, for no human can see Me and live. . . . while My Glory is passing by, I will put you in the cleft of a rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by; then I will take My hand away, and you will see My back, but My face must not be seen.”
If you can accept that Yahveh our God is a Being who can exist outside of space and time, then you will understand that God exists in many dimensions – including ours. However, there is only one place, one dimension, in which the full power of God can ever exist without destroying everything – heaven (because nothing evil or bad can possibly exist in heaven). In order to give us the knowledge of God’s powerful Glory, and so manifest Yahveh’s true nature and essence, God risked opening a doorway between two dimensions – between the realm of heaven, and our frail, mortal realm.
If you have ever blown bubbles and seen two join together, you will have seen how the intersection that is formed between them is a flat circle. I believe that is like what Moses saw – a flat circle of light, an interfacing of two dimensions. Compared to the enormity of God, God merely made a pinprick-hole between our two dimensions, but it was enough for Moses to hear God’s voice, and to peek at a limited version of God’s Glory.
This hole-like doorway would have been flat. If Moses had been able to see what was happening as God’s Glory passed by, he would have seen a circle of very bright light forming – the front or ‘face’ of this doorway. Then, as this circle of light passed by, he would have been able to see that it was flat. Once it had passed by, he would have been able to see the back of it. This was what Moses’s human eyes were able to see, without it killing him.
If you have ever seen a solar eclipse, at full extent you can see the black circle of the moon surrounded by a circle (‘corona’) of brilliant light. That is what the back of this doorway would have looked like. However, instead of the black darkness of an eclipse, imagine everywhere is blue sky – both inside the ring of light and outside of it.
What Moses saw was the blue sky, inside and outside of this radiant circle of glowing light. It was at a low enough intensity that his human eyes could behold it. He wasn’t able to see its front (‘face’), but he was able to behold its back.
I personally believe that the reason why Moses was able to survive on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, was because time atop Horeb was slowed down during his encounter with God. Down below, as the ground trembled, all that the people saw was a cloud-covered mountain top, with fire, thunder and lightning – it terrified the people. All that, to grant Moses’s request, “I pray You, please show me Your Glory!” (Ex 33:18)
No one knew, but our whole section of the Universe was in danger of being obliterated, yet God protected us. Revealing and manifesting the power of God’s Glory directly from heaven was risky, but it was all part of God’s plan to make Israel the messenger of God to the Nations, and so introduce the power of God’s salvation to the entire human race – if Israel had never existed, then Yeshua would never have existed; and if Judaism and Christianity had never existed, then Islam would never have existed.
Delivering the Message of God: the Attributes of God
As this open doorway to heaven was passing by, Yahveh spoke just 32 Hebrew words (Ex 34:6-7), which we recall each week on the Sabbath. Jewish commentators generally understand this as God revealing to us the essential, central attributes of God’s Nature. In English, this translates to:
“Yahveh! Yahveh! A compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness; who maintains a steadfast love for thousands of generations, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet I will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, pursuing the iniquity of parents down to the children of the third and the fourth generations.“
Israel is God’s messenger to the Nations. We are priests to the Nations. We exist to teach the Nations God’s ways of social justice, compassion, peace and forgiveness, so that the Kingdom of God can spread throughout the whole earth – to every people and every faith; and so that the knowledge of the Glory of God can one day fill the whole earth (Hab 2:14).
What might Yahveh have told us, if God had had more time
In my humble opinion, the Theophany was God’s attempt to make a supreme intervention in human affairs – to reveal the essential nature of the beautiful, loving and holy God we worship. I also believe that the episode showed us the risks God put us at by speaking directly to us. But this in turn also shows us how much God wants to be with us. I believe that God only had a limited time to leave this doorway to heaven open before it became too dangerous, and so I wonder what God might have said, if God had had the luxury of a much longer space of time to speak to us safely.
Yahveh is ‘compassionate and gracious’, so I’d like to think that our beloved Yahveh – who is always close to us – would have had something to say to everyone, in all kinds of situations. To those in suffering and pain, I believe that God would have taken the chance to say, “I am with you in everything you go through; I will carry you, and bear your burdens with you”. To those who have ever lost someone, God would have taken the chance to say, “Your loved ones are with Me, and they are happy, and their smiles are shining on you from paradise.” To those who are lost, it would have been a chance for God to say, “Don’t give up hope, because I will be your light to show you the way”.
Yahveh is a God who ‘forgives iniquity, transgression and sin.’ So for those of us who are broken by the weight of their past, it would have been a chance for God to say, “I forgive you; I will take away all your sins, and make of you a new being, so that you can start over again, with a clean slate.”
And Yahveh ‘pursues iniquity’, so to those who have been terribly and cruelly wronged by others, it would have been a chance to say, “I am always for the victim; and the wicked who hurt you will have to answer to Me for every single thing they have ever done to you.”
The future
For Paullists, the end of time is nothing but an apocalypse of death and destruction, when only Christians will be saved, and everyone else will go to hell. For us Jews, the end of time is something entirely different.
When the Kingdom of God is brought to its final fruition, there will be universal peace. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares, and no one will learn or train for war any more. We will no longer need the Temple to shield us from God’s Glory, because we will once more exist in a state of spiritual perfection – we will exist in a metaphorical ‘Eden’ once more, and God’s Glory cannot harm us. The Glory of God will shine like the sun, and there will no longer be any day or night (Zech 14:6-7, Rev 21:25). At the end of time, humanity will be perfected, and the veil between heaven and earth will no longer need to exist.
Summary
The Paullist message of salvation is one paid for with blood and death; the Yahwist message of salvation is one of a great Sovereign, who risks what is precious to do something even more precious: to bring to us all the true knowledge of God’s nature and God’s ways, in order to set us all on the path towards living in the perfect peace of God’s Kingdom.
The manifestation of God’s Glory – the opening of a doorway between heaven and earth – was the most important thing that God ever did, not only for Israel, but for the entire human race. Through the Theophany, we were given a blueprint for the path forward, the Way to walk. The sheer magnitude and intensity of all this, of everything I’ve just told you about, is why I celebrate Theophany Day every year, and I hope that you will join me, even if only in spirit, to celebrate that day.
Amazon UK: Readings and Prayers for Theophany Day
Amazon US: Readings and Prayers for Theophany Day