²² When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he cried out, “Oh, Sovereign Lord, I’m doomed! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”

³⁰ Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”

²⁰ But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.”

²⁶ Can any living thing hear the voice of the living God from the heart of the fire as we did and yet survive?

⁴¹ Isaiah was referring to Jesus when he said this, because he saw the future and spoke of the Messiah’s glory.

¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God,^[a] is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

⁵ Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷ He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”

⁸ Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”

I said, “Here I am. Send me.”

²¹ The angel did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Manoah finally realized it was the angel of the Lord, ²² and he said to his wife, “We will certainly die, for we have seen God!”

²³ But his wife said, “If the Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering and grain offering. He wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles.”

²⁴ They said, ‘Look, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice from the heart of the fire. Today we have seen that God can speak to us humans, and yet we live!

⁵ I stood as an intermediary between you and the Lord, for you were afraid of the fire and did not want to approach the mountain. He spoke to me, and I passed his words on to you. This is what he said: