Note 28 — Chapter X · THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

That the illumination of the countenance of Moses served as a type for the transfiguration of Jesus, is besides proved by a series of particular features. Moses obtained his splendour on Mount Sinai: of the transfiguration of Jesus also the scene is a mountain; Moses, on an earlier ascent of the mountain, which might easily be confounded with the later one, after which his countenance became luminous, had taken with him, besides the seventy elders, three confidential friends, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, to participate in the vision of Jehovah (Exod. xxiv. 1, 9–11); so Jesus takes with him his three most confidential disciples, that, so far as their powers were adequate, they might be witnesses of the sublime spectacle, and their immediate object was, according to Luke v. 28, to pray, προσεύξασθαι: just as Jehovah calls Moses with the three companions and the elders, to come on the mountain, that they might worship at a distance. As afterwards, when Moses ascended Sinai with Joshua, the glory of the Lord, δόξα Κυρίου, covered the mountain as a cloud, νεφέλη (v. 15 f. LXX.); as Jehovah called to Moses out of the cloud, until at length the latter entered into the cloud (v. 16–18): so we have in our narrative a bright cloud, νεφέλη φωτὸς, which overshadows Jesus and the heavenly forms, a voice out of the cloud, φωνὴ ἐκ τῆς νεφέλης, and in Luke an entering, εἰσελθεῖν, of the three into the cloud. The first part of the address pronounced by the voice out of the cloud, consists of the messianic declaration, composed out of Ps. ii. 7, and Isa. xlii. 1, which had already sounded from heaven at the baptism of Jesus; the second part is taken from the words with which Moses, in the passage of Deuteronomy quoted earlier (xviii. 15), according to the usual interpretation, announces to the people the future Messiah, and admonishes them to obedience towards him.28