The Lord came down from Sinai and appeared to us from Seir; He hastened from Mount Paran along with myriads at Kadesh, angels with Him at His right hand, (Deuteronomy 33:2)
ANOTHER OLD TESTAMENT ALLUSION in the fourth ode of the katavasias is the mount of shaded leafy trees, which is a reference to the Book of Habakkuk: “God will come from Teman, the Holy One from the mount of shaded leafy trees” (Hab. 3:3).
Teman is a region of the Sinai Peninsula, and “the mount of shaded leafy trees” is another name for Mount Paran, which is synonymous with Mount Horeb on Sinai. We know that God appeared to Moses on Sinai, but what is its connection with the Messiah, “the Holy One,” referred to by Habakkuk? To answer this, we must examine God’s appearance to Moses in the Book of Exodus:
Now Moses was tending the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. Then he led them to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (1) Then the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush. So he saw the bush burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not consumed.” When therefore the Lord saw him turn aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses! Moses! … I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses then hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Ex. 3:1-6)
There is an apparent contradiction in the above passage, which many people overlook. We read that the “Angel of the Lord” appears to Moses in the burning bush. Yet the angel is referred to as God, and the angel declares himself as God. Why is God being described as an angel? Angel means messenger. The Angel of the Lord is therefore one who is sent by God. Yet there can be no doubt that this Angel is God Himself. We read in Exodus that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (33:11), and in Deuteronomy, “there has not risen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (34:10).
In contrast to this, John’s Gospel tells us that “no one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father” (John 6:46), and “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18).
It is clear then that the God who appears to Moses is not the Father, since “no one has seen the Father,” and the Father cannot possibly be an “Angel (Messenger) of the Lord,” for He cannot send Himself. So if this Angel is sent by God and yet is God, who is he?
In John’s Gospel we read, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Word of God is another term for Son of God. Although He is begotten of the Father and—as the Lord Himself says no less than twenty-six times in the Gospels—is sent by Him, He is of the same divine nature as the Father. He is “with God” (the Father), and yet He “is God” (the Second Person of the Holy Trinity). It therefore follows that when our Lord says, “no one has seen God,” He means the Father. Moses did not see God the Father; He saw God the Son, the Word of God, the Preincarnate Christ.
~Vassilios Papavassiliou, Meditations for Advent: Preparing for Christ’s Birth
1 Horeb and Sinai are often used interchangeably. It is not clear whether they are two mounts of the Sinai Peninsula or the same mount. It is possible that “Mount Sinai” is a misnomer—Sinai being the region and Horeb being the Mount of Sinai.
