The Lord make His face shine on you,I've heard this blessing more times than I can remember, but for some reason this stuck out at me today. Suddenly, this doesn't make nearly as much sense as it often does.
And be gracious to you;
The one instance we have of God's face that I can recall is that it comes with a death sentence. If you see God's face, you are a dead man, for none imperfect can look upon Him. So how can His face shining on you match His being gracious to you? Death isn't generally considered gracious.
Maybe it's something about it being so close to Christmas, and how it signifies Christ coming to Earth. If that were the context, this would make a lot more sense, especially given all the Romantic-era paintings out there that show Jesus' face as somewhat luminous. But that isn't the context. Instead, the context is the Father, not too long after Mt. Sinai, where Moses specifically could not see God's face, yet the radiance of His back was enough to make Moses' face glow. That would be what I think of as gracious. God could have given Moses his wish, even at the price of his life, but didn't.
So how do I interpret this? Is it that God's face doesn't appear, but we get some kind of indirect exposure to it that benefits us? Is it linked to the next verse, which refers to His countenance, which when I looked up the definition can also mean approval? Or is it that when you die and see God's face, that He deals with you graciously?
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