Moses’s Intercession

¹² Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’^{(A) 13} Now if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider, too, that this nation is your people.”^{(B) 14} He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”^{(C) 15} And he said to him, “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.”^(D)

¹⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”^{(E) 18} Moses^[a] said, “Please show me your glory.” ¹⁹ And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord,’^[b] and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.^{(F) 20} But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.”^{(G) 21} And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, ²² and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; ²³ then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”^(H)

⁴ So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. ⁵ The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.”^{[a](A) 6} The Lord passed before him and proclaimed,

⁸ And Moses quickly bowed down to the ground and worshiped.^{(D) 9} He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, my Lord, I pray, let my Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”^(E)

²⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”^{(A) 28} He was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.^[a](B)

The Shining Face of Moses

²⁹ Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.^(C)

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,^[a] full of grace and truth.^(A)

¹⁶ From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.^{[a](A) 17} The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.^{(B) 18} No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who^[b] is close to the Father’s heart,^[c] who has made him known.^(C)