The Quran relates how the ISraelites repeatedly asked to see God. This eagerness, described in their own books, to literally see God reflects in the crude and primitive anthropomorphic expressions that abound in the Hebrew writings. At times it would ironically appear that what we have in front of us is man creating God in his own image, likeness and form rather than the other way around Gen1:26.
God for example would speak face to face with Moses Ex33:11,Numbers12:6-8. But knowing the difficulty and incompatibility of promoting monotheism while at the same time having a God incarnate, Jewish scribes have injected the text with many explicit passages in light of which one can interpret the ambiguous ones so as to safeguard the notion of pure monotheism. So although Moses spoke to God face to face, in reality no one can see God's Face Ex33:20, not even Moses who had to be covered and stand away until God passed so he could have a glimpse of God's "back" Ex33:22-23. "panim el panim", which literally means 'face-to-face' becomes an idiom to convey the exclusive closeness and intimate relation Moses had with God with whom he communicated directly, not through dreams, visions or through an angel as He did with all other Israelite prophets.
With those explicit axioms in mind, one can begin understanding why God had to appear to the Israelites through a dark cloud Ex19:9. The purpose was to strengthen the Israelites' trust in Moses by overawing them with this experience
Ex20:20"in order that His awe shall be upon your faces, so that you shall not sin".
The Torah reports the traumatic experience
Ex19:16"thunder claps and lightning flashes, and a thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very powerful blast of a shofar, and the entire nation that was in the camp shuddered".
The phenomenon of God manifesting Himself in this world clearly is in a non-incarnate sense, rather through actions and at most, dramatic occurences. This dreadful "representation" of God began to instruct the terrified Israelites. But they could not bare seeing and hearing God. Had they be seeing a human incarnation of God, they wouldnt have had any problem. Instead they begged Moses to be their sole intermediary with God, fearing that if the manifestation continued, they would die Ex20:15-21,Deut4:12-13,5:1-5,23-27.
The fear of death for seeing God was apparently deeply instilled into the hearts of the pious Israelities, who knew by experience what had befallen their forefathers who had even so much as asked for it. Gideon thought he would die simply for having seen an angelic messenger in human form Judges6:22-3. Same for Samson's father Judges13:21-22.
Further reading answering Sam Shamoun "Muhammad and the Ten Commandments"
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