Komentaryong Sumisipi para sa Isaias 33:17

המלך – needs to appear nice, as it is written (Isaiah 33:17): “When your eyes behold a king in his beauty.”

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face. This is the matter which I spoke about — that Samael wanted to blind the eyes of his intellect with the dust of evil speech, to the point where he would deny God’s existence and not see the face of God. And when my soul was saved through the rising of dawn, then I saw God face to face, to grasp His blessed existence through the shining of the sun at dawn’s rise, contrary to the view of Samael who blinds and defiles and mixes the holy with the mundane. This is what is meant by and the sun rose for him — namely to heal him. Yet afterward it says and he was limping on his hip — these verses seem to contradict each other. Rather, the meaning is that through the rising of the sun came healing for the blow that Samael wanted to strike him with, which was to blind his intellectual eyes and bring him to deny God. Therefore it says for him — for his benefit — as the sun of righteousness shone upon him with healing in its wings, and because of its rising his eyes shall see the King in His beauty. Nevertheless, Samael’s actions succeeded in making him limp on his hip and closing the gates of understanding before him, preventing him from entering into the secret counsel of God reserved for those who fear Him, so long as his eye was on his money and he was consumed by the uncontrolled desire for worldly possessions.

עד באו לדבר אתו, “until he came to speak with Him.” Actually, the Torah should have written עד באו לדבר את ה'. Why is it that the same verse which mentions the name of Moses again and again when a pronoun would have sufficed, does not accord G’d the courtesy of referring to Him by name? We again have to fall back on the statement we have already made that the entire verse is an example of the great compliment the Torah pays to Moses. Once we understand by means of such examples- how great was the esteem in which G’d held Moses, it is easier to understand that Moses as distinct from other prophets conducted a dialogue with G’d much as when people speak to each other. The informal manner in which the Torah describes Moses as communicating with G’d by even omitting to mention G’d by name, reflects this intimate relationship which existed between G’d and Moses. At the very end of the Torah (Deut. 33,11) this is spelled out for us once more when the Torah describes this unique and never repeated phenomenon of the communications between G’d and Moses, and Moses and G’d respectively, by comparing it to כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו, “just as a man speaks to his fellow.”