https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=_K5gcTJ56qk
But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off until he came out. And he came out and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. And Moses put the veil upon his face again until he went in to speak with God. And that’s Exodus 34. And so we have the reconstruction of the covenant. And we have this strange idea that, well, God, Moses in some sense, God is now shining through Moses. That’s the shining of the face. And that’s also the assimilation of Moses to something like a halo. And that’s all assimilation of Moses to the solar disk, like the king’s head on a gold coin. And the notion is there’s something cosmic behind the haloed individual. And something of cosmic intensity that’s associated with light shining through him. And all that, I think, is also a poetic description of something like overwhelming and compelling charisma. Because someone who’s charismatic has that, that light. Something is attractive in the illuminating sense. And so all of that’s packed into this, this revelation of the divine word. It also has to do with the fact that this, people probably noticed the difference, that now it’s actually Moses that’s writing on the tablet. It’s not the finger of God. So there’s, again, another level of mediation. It’s as if the first law was maybe too high. I don’t know how to say it. And now this version of the law is lower. But that also means that Moses appears to the people as God in a way. He is the image of God that they can’t bear. So because they’re in some ways lower, they need even more mediation in order for that to be possible. And also Moses has increased his own level. I mean, you can see now Moses’ face is shining. Moses is an active participant in the creation of the second tablet. In the first tablet, God just gives it to him. And they’re carved by God and they’re written on by God. So they’re too God-like to begin with. And you can see this. Moses is seen as closer to the people in the first iteration. He goes up there with the 70 elders. What I was saying earlier about the 70 elders while eating and drinking on the mountain. This time God says, no one’s coming up here with you. No one else on the mountain, anywhere on the mountain. Just you. You come up here. You’re going to carve these things yourself in front of me. You’re going to sit up here. You’re going to become essentially like an angel. You’re not going to eat. You’re not going to drink. You’ve taken on these inhuman capacities. And so Moses has to rise up himself in order to become more godly even than he was before. In order to take on the burden of how sinful the people have been. God was like, I was willing to descend to the level of the people. Because I thought the people were at a higher level than they were. They’re not at that level. They’re at the bottom of the mountain. And they proved that they ought to be at the bottom of the mountain. The same place where they were doing the golden calf. But you, Moses, you’ve proved that you belong at the top of the mountain. It’s where you were before. But now the separation between you and the people is just a lot, a lot greater.