2 Corinthians 3:13. And are not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look stedfastly to the end of that which was passing away. Here again the reference is to what is said of Moses in Exodus 34:33-35. But as this is expressed with a little obscurity, critics are divided as to the meaning. In Exodus 34:33, our Version says, “And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.” But the LXX. translates, “And after Moses had ceased speaking to them, he put a veil on his face.” Most modern critics, taking this to be the true sense of the passage, and the apostle's view of it too, understand him to mean that Moses, ere he closed his discourse, veiled his face, that the people might not see his radiance vanishing quite away. No one would naturally read the passage so, and it is far from natural; nor does the apostle say this. He says that Moses veiled his face that they “might not look stedfastly unto the end (τ ὸ τέλος) of that which was passing away;” that is, as we understand it, Moses, seeing they were afraid to come near him on account of his radiant countenance, veiled it while speaking to them (only removing the veil when he went in again before the Lord); and the import of what the apostle says, as we read his words, is, ‘Bright as was the glory of Moses' economy, like that of his countenance when he came forth from having this disclosed to him from the excellent glory, and transitory as it was like the glory of his own countenance yet it was too bright for their gaze; nor was it fitting, with their spiritual incapacity, that they should see “to the end of it:” to them it behoved to be a veiled economy, like the veiled face of the lawgiver while giving it forth to them.'

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Old Testament