Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/1107

and Vulg., and not to be construed with the words which follow (“I Jehovah will make Myself known”). The position of Jehovah at the head of the clause without a preceding אנכי (I) would be much more remarkable than the separation of the dependent noun from the governing noun by the suffix, which occurs in other cases also (e.g., Lev 6:3; Lev 26:42, etc.); moreover, it would be by no means suited to the sense, as no such emphasis is laid upon the fact that it was Jehovah who made Himself known, as to require or even justify such a construction. The “whole house of Jehovah” (Num 12:7) is not “primarily His dwelling, the holy tent” (Baumgarten), - for, in that case, the word “whole” would be quite superfluous, - but the whole house of Israel, or the covenant nation regarded as a kingdom, to the administration and government of which Moses had been called: as a matter of fact, therefore, the whole economy of the Old Testament, having its central point in the holy tent, which Jehovah had caused to be built as the dwelling-place of His name. It did not terminate, however, in the service of the sanctuary, as we may see from the fact that god did not make the priests who were entrusted with the duties of the sanctuary the organs of His saving revelation, but raised up and called prophets after Moses for that purpose. Compare the expression in Heb 3:6, “Whose house we are.” נאמן with בּ does not mean to be, or become, entrusted with anything (Baumgarten, Knobel), but simply to be lasting, firm, constant, in a local or temporal sense (Deu 28:59; 1Sa 2:35; 2Sa 7:16, etc.); in a historical sense, to prove or attest one's self (Gen 42:20); and in an ethical sense, to be found proof, trustworthy, true (Psa 78:8; 1Sa 3:20; 1Sa 22:14 : see Delitzsch on Heb 3:2). In the participle, therefore, it signifies proved, faithful, πιστός (lxx). “Mouth to mouth” answers to the “face to face” in Exo 33:11 (cf. Deu 34:10), i.e., without any mediation or reserve, but with the same closeness and freedom with which friends converse together (Exo 33:11). This is still further strengthened and elucidated by the words in apposition, “in the form of seeing (appearance), and not in riddles,” i.e., visibly, and not in a dark, hidden, enigmatical way. מראה is an accusative defining the mode, and signifies here not vision, as in Num 12:6, but adspectus, view, sight; for it forms an antithesis to בּמּראה in Num 12:6. “The form (Eng. similitude) of Jehovah” was not the essential nature of God, His unveiled glory, - for this no mortal man can see (vid., Exo 33:18.), - but a form which