²⁰ You are also to say, ‘Look, your servant Jacob is right behind us.’” For he thought, “I want to appease Esau with the gift that is going ahead of me. After that, I can face him, and perhaps he will forgive me.”

¹⁰ and they saw^(A) the God of Israel. Beneath his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as clear as the sky itself.^{(B) 11} God did not harm^[a] the Israelite nobles; they saw^(C) him, and they ate and drank.

¹⁹ He said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name ‘the Lord’ before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”^{(A) 20} But he added, “You cannot see my face, for humans cannot see^(B) me and live.” ²¹ The Lord said, “Here is a place near me. You are to stand on the rock, ²² and when my glory passes by, I will put you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.^{(C) 23} Then I will take my hand away, and you will see my back, but my face will not be seen.”

²¹ The angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord.

²² “We’re certainly going to die,” he said to his wife, “because we have seen God!” ^(A)

²³ But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had intended to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and he would not have shown us all these things or spoken to us like this.”