CHAPTER 17

That this Lord again Who gave Answers to Moses, knowing another Lord Greater than Himself as Father, called Him the True God.

(d) [Passages quoted, Exod. xxxiii. 17-18; xxxiv. 5-8.]

NOTICE, then, here how the Lord that descended in the cloud, and stood by Moses in the name of the Lord, called Another beside Himself, Who is twice called Lord, in a common form of reduplication, as one reckoned as God to be His own Master and Master of all others, and His Own Father, and that here it is not Moses, as might be supposed, but the Lord Himself Who calls another Lord His Father; for He speaks first, and say to Moses: "I - 261 - will pass before thee in my glory, and will call upon the name of the Lord." And when He has so said, Scripture goes on in narrative form: "And the Lord descended in a cloud, and stood beside him there, and called on the name of the Lord."

Thus the Lord Himself in fulfilment of His promise descends and passes before the face of Moses. And the Lord Himself calls and says: "O Lord, the God of pity and mercy," and that which follows, clearly teaching His servant Who He was, and teaching mystically the knowledge of a Lord greater than Himself. And Moses implies this, when in his prayer for the people he records the words of the Lord before us, that the Lord spoke them, and not he himself, when he says:

"And now let the hand of the Lord be exalted, as thou saidst, The Lord is long-suffering and very pitiful and true, taking away sins and injustice, and iniquity, and will not clear the guilty with purification, avenging the sins of fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation."

Notice the way in which the Lord Himself addressing the Father in these words as "long-suffering and of tender mercy," calls Him also "true," agreeing with the words: "That they may know thee the only true God," spoken in the Gospels by the same Being, our Saviour. Yea, with exceeding reverence He calls the Father the only true God, given meet honour to the Unbegotten Nature, of which Holy Scripture teaches us He is Himself the Image and the Offspring.