the face: the front of a person's head, the look it carries, and the presence of the one who turns it toward you
Hebrew always writes this word in a plural shape, but it almost always points to one thing: a face. It is built on a verb meaning "to turn" (פָּנָה), so at root it names the part of a person that turns toward you, the side that meets you and shows who is there.
From that single image the whole range grows. A face is where feeling shows, so the word slides easily into the look on a face and then the mood behind it. And a face is what you meet when someone is present, so it becomes the ordinary Hebrew way of saying "presence": to stand before a king is to stand at his face, and to be driven out from someone is to be driven from their face.
With God this is the language of both worship and dread. To seek his face is to seek him. To see his face is to meet him directly, which the Bible treats as the deepest blessing and, in the same breath, a mortal danger. To be shut out from his face is to be abandoned. Because a ruler's face was also the visible signal of his mood, Israel built a set of stock phrases on it, each one a small drama of what a face does:
- to make the face shine on someone is to show open, generous favor
- to lift someone's face is to grant their request, or in a courtroom to play favorites
- to hide the face is to withdraw help and leave a person alone in trouble
- to set the face toward something is to fix on it, whether in resolve or in hostility
Nuances
How the warning that no one may see God's face and live fits with the texts that describe people meeting God face to face (Exodus 33:11; Genesis 32:30).
- majorityIn this chapter the face means God's full self, which no one survives seeing unmediated, while the face-to-face texts describe a real but partial or mediated encounter.; H. F. Fuhs, "רָאָה rāʾāh," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. XIII, 208-242; Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation; John Knox, 1991)
- minorityThe tension is a seam between different strands of tradition about how far a person may come to God, left standing in the finished text.; H. Simian-Yofre, "פָּנִים pānîm," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. XI, 589-615
Whether the festival commands originally read "see the face of the LORD" and were later re-read as "appear before the LORD" to avoid saying that people saw God.
- majorityThe older reading was active, "see the face of the LORD", matching the wider ancient practice of coming to see the god at his temple; the vowels that make the verb passive are a later softening, and the Samaritan Pentateuch still has the active form here.; Charles T. Fritsch, "A Study of the Greek Translation of the Hebrew Verbs 'to see,' with Deity as Subject or Object," Eretz-Israel 16 (1982): 51-56; HALOT, s.v. פָּנִים; A. S. van der Woude, "פָּנִים pānîm," in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (TLOT), ed. Jenni and Westermann (Hendrickson, 1997), 2:1009; H. Simian-Yofre, "פָּנִים pānîm," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), vol. XI, 605
- minorityThe received passive reading is original, since a related text preserves the passive form unmistakably and the motive for a supposed change is inferred rather than attested.; H. F. van Rooy, "רָאָה," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDOTTE), 3:639
Disputed
What the "face of God" refers to: a genuine mode of God's bodily presence, or a carefully abstracted figure for his presence and attention.
- minorityThe divine face is one mode of God's real embodiment, a survival of an older Israelite and Canaanite picture in which a deity could be present in more than one body at once.; Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Esther J. Hamori, "When Gods Were Men": The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature (BZAW 384; de Gruyter, 2008)
- majorityThe face language is a deliberately abstracted way of speaking about God's presence, which later biblical writers largely replaced with talk of his Name and his Glory.; Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theologies (CB OT Series 18; Lund: Gleerup, 1982)