Can I or Can’t I?
חיי châyay to live, have life, remain alive, sustain life, live prosperously, live for ever, be quickened, be alive, be restored to life or health
Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Exo 33:11 ESV
But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Exo 33:20 ESV There is our word, live which in this case is a verb in its root form.
Wait a minute! Do you see a contradiction here? Speak face to face and then you cannot see my face and live? Does it make you wonder what is going on here and this apparent contradiction?
In our English language there is a major contradiction here. “The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. . . but you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
The first place we see our word châyay is in the Garden, in Genesis 2 when YHVH breathes into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, in Hebrew חי chay as an adjective, living, alive.
Here, however, the word is a masculine plural, literally the breath of lives. The Creator did not breathe into every nostril, Adam passed life on, including to Chava (aka Eve) who was formed from Adam – the living creature – and to their children. And, “the man called his wife’s name Eve, (in Hebrew chavah to breath, or living) because she was the mother of all living “chay.”
Where we run into difficulty is in taking all of this from the Hebrew language and worldview into the English language and worldview and try to capture what the Hebrew is communicating.
Here is the difficulty. The word chayay means much more than alive as contrasted with not alive or dead. The creator could have said, “for any man who sees my face shall die,” but he didn’t. Why is that?
Chayay means to sustain life, live prosperously, be restored to life or health, and even to be strengthened internally, revived.
So if he was not saying Moses would die, what was he saying? To capture this we will go to Deuteronomy 8:3.
“And He has humbled you, and caused you to hunger, and caused you to eat the manna, which you had not known, and your fathers had not known, in order to cause you to know that man shall not live (chayay) by bread alone, but man shall live (chayay) by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of Yehovah.” LITV
“Word” is not in the Hebrew, it says ‘all going forth from the mouth of Yehovah.” So we are to draw our life from all that proceeds forth and that includes all created things and the words that created them which proceeded from the mouth of YHVH.
We are not to draw our life, we are not to be strengthened, sustain our lives or be revived from bread alone – a created thing given for our good – but also through all things including the word of God.
Peter puts it this way – “As His divine power has given to us all things pertaining to life and godliness. . .” 2 Pet 1:3 LITV
Yeshua in the desert quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 to rebuke haSatan, the Adversary, who tried to put his focus on physical bread. Yeshua in effect said, “bread alone is not enough, I draw my life from my father.” He said this to his disciples when he met with the Samaritan woman at the well and they left to get food and came back.
“But in the meantime the disciples asked Him, saying, Rabbi, eat? But He said to them, I have food to eat which you do not know. Then the disciples said to one another, No one brought Him food to eat? Jesus said to them, My food is that I should do the will of Him who sent Me, and that I may finish His work.” Joh 4:31-34 LITV
His food, that which gave him chayay – that which strengthened him and sustained his life and revived him was doing the will of his father.
So Moses, could not see the face of the father, the creator, and live and here is what that means.
Author Doug Hershey puts it this way: “No one can see His face and continue to be revived and strengthened by natural means. No one can look directly at the Creator of Genesis 1 and simply call it a nice experience. In other words, no one can see the face of God and simply chayay – continue as if everything was normal.”
So when we say along with Aaron and his sons, “the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you . . .(Num 6:25-26 ESV) what we are really saying is, “don’t let me live any more like the world around me who spend their money for that which is not bread (Isa 55:2), rather radically change me.
“Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his face continuously.” Psa 105:4 TLV