But what is that place understood to be beside God? What is the rock? What is the opening in the rock? What is God’s hand covering the mouth of that hollow? What does it mean for God to pass by? And what is His back, which God promised to show Moses after Moses had asked to see Him face to face?
Each of these things must surely signify something great and worthy of the generosity of the One who gives it. We should therefore believe that this promise is greater and higher than every appearance of God already granted to the great servant. After so many ascents, Moses still longs to rise higher. The One who makes everything work for the good of those who love God guides him and makes this ascent easier: “Look,” He says, “there is a place beside Me.”
The meaning may agree with what we considered earlier. By speaking of a “place,” God does not confine what He shows within a measurable size, for what has no measurable size cannot be measured. Instead, by taking away the limits that belong to measurement, the word leads the hearer toward what is infinite and without boundary. It seems to suggest this: your desire is always stretched toward what lies ahead. You never tire of the race or find enough of the Good; your longing always reaches for more. The place beside Me is therefore such that anyone running in it can never reach the end of the course.
Yet in another sense this running is also standing still. “I will set you on the rock,” He says. This is the great paradox: the same thing is both standing still and movement. Someone who is climbing is not standing still, and someone standing still is not climbing. But here the ascent happens through standing firm. The more firmly and unchangeably someone remains in the Good, the farther he advances in the race of virtue. By contrast, someone unstable and slippery in his thinking has no firm footing in the Good. Tossed about and carried around, as the Apostle says, and wavering in his judgments about what is real, he will never run upward to the height of virtue.
People trying to walk uphill through sand may take large steps, yet they labor without benefit because their footing keeps sliding backward with the sand. They are moving, but they make no progress. But if someone, as the Psalm says, pulls his feet from the mud at the bottom of the deep and plants them on the rock, the result is different. The rock is Christ, who is perfect virtue. The more firmly and immovably he stands in the Good, as Paul advises, the faster he completes the course. His very stability becomes like a wing, lifting his heart upward through his firmness in the Good. So when God shows Moses the place, He urges him onward in the race; and when He promises to set him on the rock, He shows him how this divine race is run.
The Apostle explains the opening in the rock well when he says that those whose earthly tent is taken down have, in hope, a heavenly house not made by hands.
The person who finishes the race in that broad and spacious course—the “place” named by the divine voice—and keeps the faith will receive the crown of righteousness from the One who awards the prize. In the language of the image, keeping the faith means planting one’s feet on the rock. Scripture gives this reward many different names.
What is called here the opening in the rock is elsewhere called the delight of paradise, the eternal tabernacle, a dwelling with the Father, the patriarch’s embrace, the land of the living, the water of rest, and the Jerusalem above. It is also called the kingdom of heaven, the prize of the calling, the crown of grace, the crown of beauty, a tower of strength, joy at the table, a seat beside God, the throne of judgment, an honored place, and the hidden tabernacle.
We say, then, that Moses’ entrance into the rock is another expression pointing to this same reality. Paul understands the rock as Christ, and we believe that every hope of good is found in Christ, in whom we have learned that all treasures of good are contained. Therefore, whoever attains any good is necessarily in Christ, who contains every good.
The person who reaches this point and is covered by the hand of God, as the passage promised, will then hear the One who calls him and will follow behind Him. The hand of God is the creative power that made all things: the Only-begotten God, through whom everything came to be. He is the place in which runners run and, according to His own words, the road they travel. He is a rock for those who stand firm and a home for those who rest. To follow behind the One who calls is to “walk after the Lord your God,” as the law commands.
The great David understood the same thing. To the person who dwells under the protection of the Most High he says, “He will overshadow you with His back”—which is the same as being behind God, since the back is what is behind. Speaking of himself, David also cries, “My soul clung close behind You, and Your right hand upheld me.” See how the Psalm agrees with the story. David says that the person who clings behind God is supported by His right hand; in the same way, the hand touches the one who waits in the rock for the divine voice and longs to follow behind God.
The Lord who spoke to Moses then later fulfilled His own law. He gives the same teaching to His disciples and makes the meaning of the earlier riddle clear. He says, “If anyone wishes to come after Me”—not, “before Me.” And to the man who asks about eternal life He gives the same instruction: “Come, follow Me.” The person who follows sees what is behind.
Moses, who longs to see God, is now taught how God can be seen: to see God is to follow Him wherever He leads. God’s passing by signifies guidance for the one who follows. Someone who does not know the road cannot travel it safely unless he follows behind a guide. The guide shows the road by going ahead, and the follower will not turn from the straight path as long as he keeps the guide’s back in view.
But someone who moves off to the side or turns to face the guide invents a different path for himself, not the one the guide shows. This is why God says to the one being guided, “My face will not be seen by you.” In other words, do not turn and face the One guiding you. If you do, your course will necessarily go in the opposite direction. Good does not stand opposed to good; it follows it.
What stands opposite the Good faces it as an opponent. Vice faces virtue in this way, but virtue does not face virtue as an opponent. Moses does not face God; he sees what is behind Him. Whoever faces Him will not live, as the divine voice testifies: “No one shall see the face of the Lord and live.”
See how great a thing it is to learn to follow God. After those lofty ascents and those awe-inspiring and glorious appearances of God, only near the end of his life does Moses finally receive this grace: he has learned to follow behind God. For the person who follows God in this way, nothing produced by evil can any longer stand in his path.