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May 24, 2002/Sivan 13 5762, Vol. 54, No. 36
Longing to see God's 'face'
DR. NEIL GILLMAN
Naso/Numbers 4:21-7:89
God has a face. That seems to be the implication of the latter two blessings of the kohanim (priests) which we read this week, and which, together with the Shema and the Decalogue, are arguably the most often quoted passages in the entire Torah.
These two blessings read: "May God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you" and "May God lift God's countenance upon you and grant you peace." In both cases, the Hebrew reads panav, literally, God's "face."
Of course, God does not really have a face. When applied to God, the notion of God's face has to be understood as metaphorical - as are the other references to God's facial features implied in the notion that God "sees," "hears," "speaks," and even, in the Noah story, "smells." These are all anthropomorphisms, literally, the attribution of human forms to God.
But the more expansive notion that God has a face suggests a different set of associations. Think of what we experience when we see another person's face.
First, the face confers identity. When we see a person's face, we recognize what makes that person different from other people. To look a person in the face is also to enter into a relationship with that person.
Second, the face reflects feelings. The face carries the smile or the frown, which betrays whether that person is pleased or angry or concerned for us.
There are other biblical texts which refer to God's face. One instance is the various references to God's particular relationship to Moses. In Exodus 34:17-23, Moses asks to behold God's "presence." But God responds that Moses may see God's "back," but not God's "face," for "man may not see Me and live."
Note here that seeing God's "face" is the same as seeing "Me." But later, after Moses' death, the Torah tells us that Moses was distinctive among the prophets because in contrast to the other prophets, "...the Lord singled him out, face to face." (Deuteronomy 34:10)
The tension between these two texts reflects the ambiguity of any human being's relationship to God. In the first of these passages, Moses wants to be reassured of God's continuing concern for Israel; the context of the passage is the golden calf episode. Here God's response is decidedly ambiguous. But the second passage reflects the unique kind of intimacy that characterized God's relation to Moses himself. To be "face to face" with another person is to have that kind of intense interpersonal relation which Martin Buber was later to call an "I-Thou" relationship.
Another reference is to a phrase that appears many times in Torah and in prophetic texts, the claim that God "will hide God's face" either from Israel, or from an individual. Frequently, God's hiding of the face is an expression of God's anger at Israel's sinfulness.
The hiding of God's face indicates God's absence, the void left by a dramatic break in the relationship with God. That sense of God's sudden, inexplicable absence from our lives is also familiar to every believer.
Finally, the two references to God's face in the blessings of the Kohanim should be understood as the very obverse of God's hidden face. We are promised that God will look at us, will relate to us and deal favorably with us; and in the last blessing, that God will grant us peace, harmony, contentment, wholeness.
It is then easy to understand why we recite this passage as frequently as we do. It expresses God's ultimate blessing.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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