Knowing the unknowable

Reading Moses’ intercessory prayers, one gains a sense that the more Moses engages in prayer the deeper he is led into the divine mystery. There is a clear sense that God’s revelation is intrinsically connected to Moses’ response. Moses self-involvement enables an encounter with God of unprecedented nature. Through the use of a variety of metaphors and anthropomorphic language, a complex and sophisticated biblical truth is established: God is gracious and merciful and yet holy and morally demanding, He is seen and yet unseen, He is close and yet He transcends human perception. These irresolvable tensions are inherent in Exod 33:18–24 and are confirmed in the actual revelation of God’s name (Exod 34:6–7). The text, as Moberly observes, articulates, in its own way, “that sense which has been fundamental to classic theology that to know God is to know the one who surpasses knowledge.”—Standing in the Breach, page 90