Unlike many people today, the ancients knew that God was utterly holy, and they were not. The humility that they demonstrated is in many ways admirable. Man, in his sinful state, is incapable of withstanding even the afterglow of God’s holiness. The mere afterglow of God’s glory was something that the people of old could not tolerate, so Moses wore a veil to shield them from it.
UNVEILED FACES MEANING SKIN
Then the children of Israel would see that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant so he would again put the veil over his face until he went in to converse with the LORD ( Exodus 34 ). On coming out, he would tell the children of Israel all that had been commanded. Whenever Moses entered the presence of the LORD to converse with him, he removed the veil until he came out again. … the children of Israel … were afraid to come near him. In Exodus, however, the veil is presented in far more ambivalent terms:Īs Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he conversed with the LORD.
In this sense most of us consider it something good and positive, though perhaps some are less enthusiastic than others. In most traditional Catholic settings, we think of the veil as something a woman wears as a sign of traditional modesty. In it, he spends substantial time developing the fact that Moses wore a veil to cover the afterglow of God radiating from his face. The readings toward the end of the week in daily Mass come from St.
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