Who spoke to Moses on the Mountain? (PART 2)

In PART 1 of this series, I introduced the idea of Moses engaging with more than "Hashem" alone in terms of receiving Torah. It was noted that the activity did not distract from Hashem's holiness or authority and this instalment of the series is going to explore the evidence to prove that Hashem is glorified by means of dispatching supernatural messengers on His behalf.

As with so much of Israel's culture, as expressed through Torah, there is a need for me to be careful of assuming readers understand the Hebrew language in terms of words which too easily get lost in translation. In sitting down to write this instalment, the reality of this has come through strongly again in terms of thinking about how to approach the idea of giving you peace in the fact that Hashem did in fact use supernatural sons to communicate with Moses.

It is for this reason that I purposely decided to use two terms "Holiness" and "Authority" in terms of Hashem's credibility.

In terms of "holiness", I know from experience as a rabbi, teaching believers drawing near to Torah, that people generally don't understand the concept as well as they need to so as to get a full appreciation of its meaning.

The simplest starting point is to note that in its purest sense and application, holiness of course is rightfully attributed to Hashem. If I was to choose an adjective to describe Hashem first, I would use holy. The simplest way to explain holiness is to speak about separation. Holiness is about being separate or apart. Now of course for those who have learnt that Hashem is a loving father figure, this divine attribute will be difficult to process, because a good father figure is not considered to be "separate" in the general sense.

However, in terms of specifically dealing with the nature of Hashem in an exclusive sense, we have to think of Him as "separate". Let's expand that idea for context.

On the simplest level, Hashem is "separate" in holiness because He is both self-sufficient and self-efficient. Don't forget we are still talking about holiness here. So holiness expresses itself in our understanding, firstly as "separate" or "apart from anything else". That would be the most natural and pure state of "holiness".

From this point as noted, there is the issue of self-sufficiency and self-efficiency. The only one who can claim this state is predictably Hashem. Anything else as an act of creation, is not in fact self-sustaining or self-sufficient. Not even the most powerful of supernatural sons of Hashem. We will get to that in PART 3.

Hashem's "holiness"(separateness, uniqueness, self -sufficiency, self-efficiency) does not automatically imply that He has no interest in communing, which you, as a believer would already know if you are even reading this to begin with.

It goes without saying that Hashem has not in fact kept Himself wrapped in absolute holiness, because if He had done so, there would be no awareness of His being in anything outside of Himself.

So this reality opens an interesting theological exploration, which is to say that there must be states/conditions of holiness where the holiness is perceived and received outside of Hashem Himself.

If this is true, which it is of course, then it means that Hashem, of His own perfect will and choice, allows Himself to be perceived and subsequently received. At this point I need you to understand that effectively Hashem's fullest sense of being is, for lack of a better term "watered down". This is a vitally important concept to grasp. Pure holiness is so distinct that any distilling of that holiness is actually weakening the absolute pure state. It is not to say that this is wrong or negative, it is just a fact concerning the phenomena of "holiness".

To make useful sense of that statement, we would need to turn our attention to the role of the divine representatives, outside of Hashem Himself, who engaged Moses on Mount Sinai and how it is they protect the holiness of Hashem.

See you at PART 3!