The Face of God

We don't usually translate the word for "face" in the Bible as "face." Sometimes this is for okay reasons but often, I suspect, it is done to avoid the scandal of the fact that God has a face. When we suppress this word we cheat and mistreat ourselves. Case in point: Jonah. When we translate "panim" as "presence" we lose a through line in Jonah, the "glow" of anger, the expression of the eye, the torturous heat on Jonah's head. Even more we lose the possibility of seeing how all this is spoken of in the Bible intertextually. To take just one example, think of how God's face is pleased with Jacob when Jacob wins in the wrestling match with God at the Jabbok. Not to see this dialogue within the Bible itself is fatal to our unpacking of the TNK and the booklet we call the New Testament. P.S. Please note Barth's advice is to consider that it is God who defines "face." We don't extrapolate "up" from our dictionary definitions of face, naturalistic definitions of "face" to God but rather we allow the Bible to define what God and indeed man's face might be. No natural theology here.