All of this takes place in the immediate wake of the sin of the Golden Calf. And one wonders, how could the Israelites have been so foolish as to lapse into idolatry? They had experienced the Ten Plagues, the parting of the Sea of Reeds, and revelation at Mt. Sinai. How could they have abandoned the God of Israel, scant weeks after experiencing the greatest miracles in Jewish history?

God and Moses both grasp the severity of the situation. The whole plan of rescuing Israel from Egypt is plunged into deep confusion. The mission statement of the rescue attempt—that “You shall have no other gods before Me,” has now been called into question.

Moses responds by grinding up the Golden Calf, casting it into the water supply, and having the people drink it. In light of both the traditional and modern uses of gold as a healing modality, this is an interesting gesture. Perhaps Moses wishes to heal the people, as much as he wishes to punish them. Moses also commands the Levites to kill the perpetrators of the rebellion on the spot.

God, from His side, threatens to exterminate the whole nation, and make a new, more faithful people out of Moses. To his everlasting great credit, Moses talks God out this plan. And it is possible that God fully intended that Moses should talk him out of it. As a result, God is able to maintain Himself as the merciful God of all mankind. And Moses is able to demonstrate, for all time, that effective leadership means making huge allowances for human frailty.

Now, as we arrive at the passage quoted above, God and Moses are debating the merits of whether God should lead the people directly or indirectly. God points out that His is a dangerous presence, and that it makes no sense for Him to dwell among the people if they are as prone to confusion as they have just demonstrated themselves to be. Moses argues that if God doesn’t lead directly, the Jewish people will immediately cease to be able to fulfill their mission as God’s people.

God allows Moses to talk him out of any alternative arrangement—again, fully intending that Moses should succeed in doing so. Now, Moses seeks to parlay these victories into a direct vision of the Glory of God. What is the nature of that Glory, and why does Moses want to gain insight into it?

The word KAVOD in Hebrew usually means, “honour,” or “respect.” However, when applied to God, the connotation changes. In that context, the relationship of KAVOD to God is like the relationship between light and the sun. “M’LO KOL HA-ARETZ K’VODO”—”The fullness of all the earth is God’s Glory,” says the prophet Isaiah. In other words, God’s KAVOD is something that “shines,” or permeates throughout God’s creation.

Permeating all, giving life and being to all, God’s Glory could be compared to the colourless sap of a tree. Having no real form or substance of its own, the colourless sap is nevertheless responsible for all the vibrancy and colour of the tree. Similarly, God’s Glory. It is the formless, invisible influence that makes things the way they are, and causes things to happen the way they do.

There is therefore, a strong hint that what Moses wants to know is exactly what we all want to know: why does the world work the way it does? Why do things happen the way they happen? Science answers many of these questions on the level of Nature and its processes. But the most intriguing aspect of this question always has to do with human destiny. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? And so on.

In this short passage, God gives three answers to these implied questions:

Answer #1: “I will be gracious to whomever I am gracious, and I will show mercy to whomever I show mercy.” Here, God seems to be saying that while we cannot know the wherefores and why’s of what happens to us, we should rest assured that all of it—the good, the bad, and the ugly of it—ultimately comes from God, and that He punishes and rewards human beings with aplomb. After all, He is God.

Answer #2: “You cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live.” Notice what God is NOT saying here. God never says that Moses couldn’t see His face—only that he couldn’t see God’s face and LIVE. In other words, there may well come a time when we will be able to see “God’s face” directly, and be in a position to fathom the precise reason why things happen the way they do. But not in this world, or this lifetime.

Answer #3: “I will put you in a cleft of the rock…and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen.” Just because we can’t see God’s face and live, doesn’t mean that we’re totally blind. It’s possible at least to see God’s back, and still retain our body, mind, and senses in the physical universe. And what is God’s back? After God has done what he’s done, and we look back at all that has happened to us, perhaps we can begin to understand why God decided to do the things that he did.

Very often, in retrospect, we perceive the events of our life very differently than in the immediate present. Even experiences of intense pain and deep confusion, when seen in the context of our lives as a whole, can be accepted as lessons that we needed to learn when they are analyzed in present tense. Maybe this is what it means to “see God’s back.”