When Victor Hugo described God as “a divine and terrible radiance,” he used the word terrible not to indicate something frightening or dreadful but to imply an experience that attached a degree of unbearable intensity. In that phrase, Hugo caught not only the core meaning of kabōd, but the truth contained in an old Jewish epigram that says, “God is not a kindly old uncle, he is an earthquake.”4 No human being can withstand the effulgence of kabōd. Thus, the glory of God conveys the sense of a deep and dazzling darkness. Moses’ request to see the kabōd Yahweh is denied. He is told to cover his
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