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42. The Meaning
of the “Bright Cloud.”
Next to these come the words, “While He was yet
speaking, behold, also, a bright cloud overshadowed
them,”5814 etc. Now, I
think that God, wishing to dissuade Peter from making three
tabernacles, under which so far as it depended on his choice he was
going to dwell, shows a tabernacle better, so to speak, and much more
excellent, the cloud. For since it is the function of a
tabernacle to overshadow him who is
in it, and to shelter him, and the bright cloud overshadowed them, God
made, as it were, a diviner tabernacle, inasmuch as it was bright, that
it might be to them a pattern of the resurrection to come; for a bright
cloud overshadows the just, who are at once protected and illuminated
and shone upon by it. But what might the bright cloud, which
overshadows the just, be? Is it, perhaps, the fatherly power,
from which comes the voice of the Father bearing testimony to the Son
as beloved and well-pleasing, and exhorting those who were under its
shadow to hear Him and no other one? But as He speaks of old, so
also always does He speak through what He wills. And perhaps,
too, the Holy Spirit is the bright cloud which overshadows the just,
and prophesies of the things of God, who works in it, and says,
“This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased;” but I
would venture also to say that our Saviour is a bright cloud.
When, therefore, Peter said, “Let us make here three
tabernacles,”5815
5815 The text is
mutilated. | …one from the
Father Himself, and from the Son, and one from the Holy Spirit.
For a bright cloud of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit overshadows the
genuine disciples of Jesus; or a cloud overshadows the Gospel and the
law and the prophets, which is bright to him who is able to see the
light of it in the Gospel, and the law, and the prophets. But
perhaps the voice from the cloud says to Moses and Elijah, “This
is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased, hear Him,” as they
were desirous to see the Son of man, and to hear Him, and to behold Him
as He was in glory. And perhaps it teaches the disciples that He
who was, in a literal sense, the Son of God, and His beloved in whom He
was well-pleased, whom it behoved them especially to hear, was He who
was then beheld, and transfigured, and whose face shone as the sun, and
who was clothed with garments white as the light.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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