The Lord Whose Name Is Impassioned

 There is some weird stuff going on in Exodus 34. Which, the last thing I want is to imagine that I understand EVERYTHING going on with Moses in Sinai in the 4th Millennium BC, because there is no possible way. So it is rewarding to look at something and go, "wow, what the heck is going on there? Lets try to find out."

Exodus 34 starts with Moses being told to carve new tablets and bring them up to the top of Sinai where G-d will carve them anew. He must go alone, and not even sheep should graze at the foot of the mountain.

So Moses does this.

The cloud descends on the mountain and the Lord stands with Moses. It then says that the Lord "proclaimed the name Lord."

The Lord proclaimed His own Name, in other words.

Actually it was "proclaimed the Name YHWH" but in the Hebrew Tanakh and probably in the Christian version of the Bible too, it says "Lord" in place of The Name.

Now it is worth noting at this point, and I might do a post on just that, but it is important to quickly note that G-d has a specific name. G-d's name is not "God" though you could say that is one of His names. Various things are worthy of note in relation to the fact that G-d has a name, but we may get to that later. The vowels in The Name have been lost, but it is generally been interpreted as YAHWEH.

G-d thereupon does a very very curious thing!

You may have seen in movies about ancient Egypt or perhaps other monarchic eras, when the Pharoah or king walks into the room there is a herald. So for instance in a movie about ancient Egypt, the herald might walk in front of the Pharaoh and say, "Pharoah Aten-Joe-Bob, blessed of the Nile, Pharaoh of the Two Egypts, beloved of Ra, conquerer of Shamesh-mahbooty..." and so on.

Well, on top of Mount Sinai, in front of Moses, G-d proceeds to herald... HIMSELF. He proceeds to say, of HIMSELF,

"The Lord! The Lord!" or to probably be more precise, "YHWH! YHWH!" (we are going to assume that YHWH is used in place of Lord from now on.)

"The Lord! The Lord! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children's children, upon the third and fourth generations." ~Exodus 34:6-7

And G-d Himself is being the herald FOR Himself here. Basically, THIS is my Name and THIS is what I am about. Now, you would have to assume that G-d could have called upon myriad angels to say all this, but He says it Himself. He could have had infinite angels say stuff like "Creator of the Universe, molder of the plasma of supernovas, crafter of the atom" and stuff like that and had Moses quivering into jello. He does not mention any of this, but He is clearly heralding Himself.

It's very very queer, is what it is. One possible takeaway is that G-d does not need angels to be intermediaries. Even though at this point, granted, He is only talking to a single human being on the entire planet, he talks to that one directly. Intentionally not being heralded by anyone else.

This is one of the weirdest parts of Exodus 34, but not the part that really blows my mind. So lets move on.

So Moses asks for blessing for his people Israel and G-d covenants with them. He then tells Moses that the Israelites are going to go into Canaan and displace all the people there. And the part that is emphasized is that the various Canaanite tribes should not be left in the land to have any relationship with the Israelites, lest they be led astray and follow other gods. The Israelites must make no covenant whatsoever with these people. It says:

"No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts; for you must not worship any other god, because the Lord, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God."

Now you might pass over the last half of that (emphasis mine) without thinking much of it, and that would be a mistake. G-d already directly intentionally told us His name!

It's not "Impassioned," right? It's YHWH! So what gives?

The Name YHWH is believed to be derived indirectly somehow from the name G-d gave Moses at the Burning Bush. When Moses asked G-d for His name, He said "ehyeh asher ehyeh" which means "I am that I am" or "I will be what I will be" or more generally, "I exist that I exist.

Or maybe...

"I live that I live."

Why do I say that? It is normally interpreted "I am that I am."

I interpret it that way because that would tie into His name also being "Impassioned."

The difference between living and existing, is being impassioned.

Caring, in other words. If you don't care about anything, you may be existing but you are not living. G-d does not just exist, He LIVES. There are a large number of words that connect into the same thing, which I all put under the umbrella of "care." G-d is impassioned. G-d is in some sense emotional, or at least the closest parallel to our human understanding is emotion. G-d is jealous. In several other places "impassioned" is interpreted "jealous."

So you could say that care has a light side and a dark side. G-d brings down evildoers, that is sort of the dark side of "care." He cares about the innocent being unjustly afflicted, so the wicked are undone. All of the bright and dark implications of caring, He has. If you want a human parallel, a man cares about his family so he makes sure they are well taken care of and loved and has things that would be good for them. He also shoots the home invader who breaks in trying to do them harm.

G-d Cares.

And He is saying so loud and clear, for those who have ears to hear. His Name, implies caring. He is not an indifferent G-d.

This is a huge difference between Him and the god of the deists and the like, or Buddhist conceptions among many others. G-d caring is an uncomfortable thought for intellectuals and rationalists and the like. "G-d has this whole enormous universe to think about! Why would He worry about what little people on a little planet do? What these tiny hairless apes do! G-d does not look or mind."

This is a common justification for their ethical relativism and disobedience. There are even Psalms that refer to this philosophy, parts of Psalms 10 and 94.Well, the G-d of Sinai definitively disagrees.

This is the part of Exodus 34 that blows my mind if I think about it. G-d's Name is Impassioned. G-d's Name is Care. The difference between living and just existing, is care. And G-d is a living G-d, as it also states elsewhere in the Tanakh. He cares.

Mind = Blown

However, we are not done with the weirdness in Exodus 34.

When Moses comes back down from Mount Sinai, it says "the skin of his face was radiant." Now it does not elaborate, whether he was just beaming from being near G-d or whether it was literally emitting light. Everybody was scared of him when he came down, so it must have been impressive. So after that point, when he spoke to G-d, he would show his face all lit up and then covered his face with a veil so they wouldn't see it until the next time he came down from the mountain.

Now when you think of religious leaders in this day, guys with slicked back hair and $5000 suits and $500 manicures, it might be worth thinking about a guy in dusty robes who went around with his face in a veil. All the time, pretty much. So he was there hanging out with the people of Israel, doin stuff, and his face was covered. It's kind of a surreal thought.

The traditional Christian interpretation of this is that Moses was vain, and didn't want people to see the glow fade from his face and him become just another human. You might be able to quote me something in the Tanakh that shows this, but I don't think so. I think he should have thought up the veil even if his face didn't glow like a Christmas tree.

Ever see a statue representing Justice? Usually a female statue with scales. And it is usually blindfolded. Well Moses was the highest judge, the Supreme Court basically, of the people of Israel. They took all the tough cases to him, and easy cases were decided by lesser judges.

What do you think when you see Moses deciding a case with a veil over his face, just a piece of cloth in a hood? I have touched on this in other posts: Moses did not have the luxury of representing himself, or even representing the People of Israel. He, and Aaron and other priests, represented G-d. They were ambassadors for G-d. As such, they needed to represent G-d's interests above anything else. The person of Moses was not relevant, the person of Moses might have personally liked or loved the defendant in a case he was hearing. That Moses has to be put on a shelf.

This is the representative of G-d Almighty on Earth. The person is entirely subordinated to the role. This is not Moses the man anymore. Moses is not here.

THAT is why Moses wore a veil.