God’s Clouds – (4.) Moses and the Cloud of Guidance
God’s Clouds – (4.) Moses and the Cloud of Guidance.
“God thunders marvelously with His voice; He works wonders that we cannot understand.
He commands the snow, ‘Fall to the ground!’ And the downpour of rain, His mighty downpour of rain…
He loads the clouds with moisture and scatters His lightning-clouds…
Listen to this, O Job, and pay attention! Stand still and ponder the wondrous works of God;
Do you have any idea how God controls the storms, and causes the lightning to flash from His clouds?
Do you understand how the clouds are balanced in the sky, floating in the air, which are miraculous works of Him who is perfect in wisdom and skill? (Job 37:5-6, 11, 14-16).
Clouds truly are wondrous, and miraculous, and one of our Creator’s greatest inventions. Each cloud we see in the sky is unrepeatable, completely unique and always changing. They can be dark and foreboding, or light and joyous. They can pour down upon us light rain or heavy rain, a blizzard of snow or postcard snowflakes, driving hail or frozen ice. They can strike the earth with dramatic lightning or be a sun-drenched fluffball. Clouds can be practically luminous and filled with sunlight or monstrously dark without any light at all. It’s no wonder clouds have captured the imagination of poets, artists, pretty much all of mankind since the beginning, for they are just hanging there in the sky between heaven and earth, somehow floating and perfectly balanced in midair, above the earth yet still near us as well. Hopefully the science of clouds we now know will not remove the unpredictable mystery and glorious wonder of clouds. As author John Ruskin put it, “You may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been a year’s thought over the plan of it – a picture in itself. You may try every other piece of cloud in the heavens, and you will find them everyone as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another.” (The True and the Beautiful, 1858).
“Yahweh went on ahead to guide them during the day in a cloud shaped like a pillar; at night He appeared to them in a fire shaped like a pillar to light their way. Yahweh did not remove the cloud pillar or the fire pillar… And so it continued – cloud cover by day, and something like fiery storm clouds at night. Whenever the cloud lifted up, the Israelites would pack up and move, and wherever the cloud stopped, they would settle. This is how the Lord Yahweh indicated when the Israelites should travel and where they should set up camp… They always followed the command of the Lord, whether staying or leaving. So it was that the Israelites obeyed God’s command in all their journeys. When the Lord indicated that they stop, they stopped; when He directed them to move, they moved. They served him exactly as God commanded them through Moses… Through all their wanderings, the cloud of Yahweh stood over the Tabernacle during the day and at night fire was lit for all the community of Israel to see.” (Ex. 13:21; Nu. 9:16-23; Ex. 40:36-37).
This celestial pillar that seemed to change when day gave way to night, from cloud to fire, was a gift of Almighty God. The pillar was a constant reminder of God’s presence with them, His direct aid to guide and to reassure them of His help in the wilderness. Many have said that this fire was an angel revealing the fire of heaven. Others have said the fire was God’s shekinah presence. Others say this fire was a clear display of the Holy Spirit, a flame from the consuming fire of God’s glory. With this fire, it didn’t consume anything, but instead it illuminated, guided, and spoke of God’s loving power. The Hebrews learned to trust this, God’s gift to them, as they wandered in unknown territory. And this powerful pillar never left them during their forty-year journey, which means God never left them either.
The Pillar of Cloud as a Theophany. Theophany is from the Greek words “Theo” (God) and “phaino” (to appear). So a theophany is when God makes a temporary appearance on earth for reasons of His own. A theophany is God’s temporary visible manifestation to remind us of His permanent presence in the world. A theophany is when God stoops to us in gracious self-revelation in a form that we can experience through our senses. Theophanies, though, are preliminary, because they anticipate the ultimate theophany in the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Theophanies in the Hebrew Bible were God’s temporary appearances, but in Jesus we see the fulfillment of theophany, a permanent appearance of God on earth.
The Pillar of Cloud as Shekinah: The word “shekinah” is not found in the Hebrew Bible, but was used by the Jewish authorities between the Testaments and in the Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible to be equivalent to the Hebrew word “Kavod,” which means “glory.”
. Shekinah is a word that combines “shakan” (Dwells) and “mishkan” (tabernacle), and so literally means “the One who dwells, settles in, resides, makes Himself at home.”
. Shekinah is defined as the Divine Presence, the glory of God that dwells on earth, and implies God’s nearness, closeness, God’s with-ness to us.
. Shekinah was often used as a word that represents God’s holy name Yahweh, which was not to be pronounced.
. Shekinah is understood in Judaism, and then adopted by Christianity, to be the “uncreated light, fire and luminous cloud” that became visible when God made an appearance on the earth. God’s Shekinah glory announced His presence.
. Shekinah glory is not the full inner essence of God’s Being, since God is an invisible Spirit who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16). But instead, God’s Shekinah is the “out-raying” of that source of Light, like the sunbeams coming directly from the sun. We can’t even look directly at the sun, but we can see and feel and get the benefits of the sun though its rays. The Shekinah is the sunbeam from the “Father of Lights.” Isn’t it wonderful that the palmist exclaims that “Yahweh God is the sun!” (Ps. 84:11).
. Shekinah has been described as when the Omnipresent One becomes localized, when the Invisible One becomes visible.
. Shekinah is God’s visible glory pulsating outwards from the spiritual energy of God’s Being, the flowing out of light from the “consuming fire” of God’s essence . (Ex. 24;17).
. Shekinah is also equivalent to the Biblical terms “My Glory,” “The Cloud,” “The Pillar of Cloud,” “My Presence,” and “the Cloud of Yahweh” in the eyes of rabbinic authorities.
“For the cloud of Yahweh was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.” (Exodus 40:38).