HEBREW WORD STUDY – MISUNDERSTANDING – MASEVEH מסוה Mem Samek Vav Hei

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

II Corinthians 3:13: “And not as Moses, [which] put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:”

In our Monday evening Aramaic/Hebrew Workshop on our Leaning Channel we started discussing the word racham which is what I have been referring to quite a bit lately since that is the subject of my new book that I am completing. Someone asked if the glow or radiance that people saw on Moses’s face that causes him to put a veil over his face was really a visual display of racham love.

I have to admit that I don’t know, but it is an intriguing thought. Racham is supernatural love, a love that is beyond the natural realm. It is the ultimate expression of the love of God, something that we cannot experience in our physical body because of the sin nature but we can experience in our spirit because Jesus has cleaned up our spirit to be sinless by his death and resurrection. Only those who accepted this cleansing power from Jesus can know or taste racham in their spirit. The only love this world can experience is ‘ahav love which has the potential of being a very powerful love such that one is willing to lay down their life for it. Yet, racham exceeds even that. You say you cannot image that? Well, if you never tasted a Big Mac I can explain its taste as much as possible but you will not know what a Big Mac tastes like until you eat one. So too, you cannot know the potential of racham until you experience it.

I sometimes listen to testimonies on YouTube of people who have died and met Jesus or had visions or visitations of Jesus coming into their rooms. I don’t place much stock in such stories, except those that describe Jesus as a light of love. They describe it as a love that they never experienced on earth in the physical realm. I hear of testimonies of people dying and meeting their family, their friends, even their pet dog, but they never mention Jesus. I reject those testimonies outright. I mean if you have tasted the love racham of God, the first face you want to see is not a family member or relative and definitely not a former pet. It would be Jesus. Some even speak of meeting an angel but say nothing of feeling any special love. I put a red flag on that testimony. Even those who say they met Jesus, if they never comment on something remarkable about His love, a love beyond anything they ever experienced, I pass on it as just experience as pure imagination. But talk about a light of unspeakable love, you have my attention.

This makes me wonder if that light that people see giving off love they never experienced here on earth is not racham. They were seeing racham, seeing the perfection of ultimate love. A love so powerful that you can actually see it. Is that what people saw on Moses’s face? Then why cover it up? In these testimonies, the people said they were so overcome by this powerful light of love that they knelt in shame before it. Maybe that is why we do not see this racham or experience racham on the level of God because we just could not handle it. Moses was giving the law and telling the people what sin was and He was telling them as the light of racham was showing on his face. Once he finished his little sermon on the law, he put on the veil. In the presence of racham love, the Heavenly Love of God, hearing the law made a very deep impression.

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, the word for veil is 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 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. A sinless baby looking at its mother with love or racham. Meseveh is associated with seeing one’s heart and/or seeing love, perhaps racham. The maseveh Moses wore was to conceal that intimacy people were feeling as God shared Heart with the people explaining what they could do that would bring Him pleasure.

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 racham of God, it would be the most pleasurable experience they would ever have. They would burn with desire to know all of God’s laws and want to meditate on it day and night as David said in Psalms 1:2. 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 see another use of the word meseveh is a misunderstanding or to error. He wore the veil to prevent any misunderstanding that this was God’s love racham, not Moses’s.

You may say: “Oh, that is not possible that they would make such a mistake with Moses.” 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. Of course, they would never admit it.

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. Maybe God gave his people something they could see, racham.