BUT IF IT IS INDEED THE CASE that God Himself was seen by so many, why is Moses singled out as the one who spoke to God face to face? The answer lies in Exodus 33, when Moses asks to see God in all His glory:
“I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, reveal Yourself to me, that I may see You clearly and find grace in Your sight …” Then God said, “I will pass before you in My glory, and I will proclaim My name, the Lord, before you. I will. have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face; for no man can see My face and live …. Here is a place by Me: you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand, and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:13-23)
God appeared to the patriarchs “disguised” as a man or an angel. No one saw His true face, for to see God was deemed certain death. But when we consider Exodus 33, it is clear that the difference between Moses and the other patriarchs and prophets is that he saw God, as it were, “uncloaked” and God permitted him to see His glory.
That the Son of God, and not the Father, is the one who is manifest throughout the Old Testament is well expressed in the oldest synodal statement on Old Testament Christology—that of the Synod of Antioch in AD 268/9:
The Son was not just a spectator nor wash merely present, but … came down and appeared to Abraham “at the oak of Mamre,” [as] one of the three, with whom the patriarch conversed as Lord and Judge…. This is who, fulfilling the Father’s will, appears to and converses with the patriarchs … sometimes as an Angel, at other times as Lord, and at other times being testified to as God. Truly it is impious to suppose that one can call the God of all an angel; however the Angel of the Father is the Son, he is Lord and God, for it is written: “His name will be called the Angel of Great Counsel”…. And concerning Jacob: “the Angel of God,” [Jacob] says, “spoke to me in a dream, saying. . . “I am the God who appeared to you at the ‘Place-of-God,’ where you anointed the pillar and made a vow to Me.”
“So Jacob called the name of that place ‘The Form of God’; ‘For I saw God face to face, and my soul was saved’”. . . But we are also taught these things by Moses: “Then the Angel appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush.”… This is who, speaking the truth, says: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from the Father; He has seen the Father.” And in the same Gospel: “You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form,” 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.” The Apostle says of Him: “He is the image of the invisible God”… The Son however, being with the Father, is indeed God and Lord of all things made, yet he was sent by the Father from the heavens, and was made flesh, becoming man. 1
The reference in the fourth ode of the katavasias to the mount mentioned in the prophecy of Habakkuk points us to the Old Testament theophanies, and, therefore, to the divinity of the Messiah. Jesus is the same Divine Person who appeared to Moses on Sinai, the One who “looks upon the earth and makes it tremble,” who “touches mountains, and they smoke” (Ps. 103/104:32-33), the same God who led Israel out of Egypt (Judg. 2:1 -3).
~Vassilios Papavassiliou, Meditations for Advent: Preparing for Christ’s Birth
1 Fr. Michael S. Spanou, trans., Minutes of Hymaenius, Paulus von Samosata, eine Untersuchung zur altkirchlichen Literaturund Dogmengeschichte (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1924), Friedrich Loofs
