HEBREW WORD STUDY – SEEING LOVE – MASEVEH  מסוה  

Exodus 34:33: “And [till] Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.”

I remember many many years ago when I was in Beginner’s Sunday School.  That was the next step up from Tiny Tots.  I must have been at least five years old and I clearly remember one Sunday when my Sunday School teacher was teaching about Moses using a flannel graph. Unless you are an old goat like me you will not recall flannel graphs.  These where fabric type boards placed on a tripod and the teacher would put up cut out figures with flannel on the back so that it would adhere to the board like Velcro.  It usually did not stick like Velcro, however.  Anyways, I remember the story of Moses returning from the mountain and his face was shining. My Sunday School teacher put a flannel graph bucket over Mose’s head saying his face was so bright that the people could not look upon him. 

Well, that was a good sixty plus years ago and when I think of this story I still picture Moses with a bucket over his head when I hear this story. In fact, up until now I always assumed he wore this “bucket” over his head because his face was so bright people could not look upon it.  I mean why else would he cover this glory of God?

My bias was so set that even reading this story many times, Exodus 34:33 never sank in. Clearly, Moses did not wear the “bucket” over his head to protect the people from the bright light.  Yet, it has been so ingrained since childhood that I could read Exodus 34:33 and it just would not register. You know we can become so biased in our opinions that even when confronted with the facts we will not see it. I think many preachers who have preached on this must have had the same Sunday School teacher because I have even heard them say Moses kept the veil over his face to protect the people from the brightness.  

You see in Exodus 34:33 we learn that Moses did not cover his face as he spoke with the people.  Only when he finished speaking did he wear the veil. Actually, in Hebrew, this veil or bucket was a maseveh which is simply a covering.  It is a word that is used for veil, but it is also used for any type of covering to conceal something like secrets, intimacy etc.  The Targum renders this in the Aramaic as an expression of looking.  I read something very interesting in the Talmud Kethuboth 60a and 62b this morning that shows the word maseveh is a picture of a baby looking into its mother’s eyes while nursing and its mother looking back with the same tenderness and love.  Meseveh is associated with seeing one’s heart and/or seeing love. The maseveh Moses wore was to conceal that intimacy he was having with God that would only be revealed when God wanted to speak to his people with the same intimacy.

For those with sin or do not have a pure heart, they could not look upon the love of God and feel any pleasure.  But for those who were pure in heart to look upon the face of Moses glowing with the glory of God, it would be those most pleasurable experience they would ever have.  The Talmud goes on to teach that Moses also had to cover his face because the people might mistake that glow as coming from Moses and not God and they would begin to worship Moses.

You may say: “Oh, that is not possible.”  Really, I have been in churches where the pastor has a sort of Charisma as we call it. They place that guy up on such a high lofty platform that it seems they almost worship him.   They would never admit it, the pastor would never assume such a thing, 

But you see the reason people built idols of wood and stone and worshipped them wasn’t that they believed there was a power in that wood or stone.  They knew it represented the god they worshipped.  But they needed something that they could see to worship and they ended up worshipping a piece of wood and stone.  Not much different than worshipping a piece of flesh and blood. We say people idolize a celebrity, a President and a pastor.