Pay your shekel-dues. Wash your hands. Observe the Sabbath. And don't forget -- no graven images.

Oops.

Maimonides, who fought to eradicate anthropomorphism from our G-d-talk, loved this passage. He refers to it no fewer than seven times in Part I of his Guide, offering a wide range of interpretations of the various images in the narrative, and of the narrative as a whole. It was Maimonides, above all, who taught us to read the graphic descriptions of divine manifestation, both in the Bible and in the rabbinic literature, as poetic imagery, which hint at but do not fully capture G-d's reality. Among the most poignant lessons he derives are the following:

• "Stand" and "rock" are both part of the Bible's metaphoric vocabulary. By asking Moses to "stand on the rock," God was directing him to remain steadfast in his affirmation of the rock of all existence.

• The Hebrew ahor (G-d's "back") means "aftermath." We do not perceive G-d, but we perceive G-d's effects (as one observes the wake of a ship) and infer from it the Presence that must have caused them.

• The "attributes of mercy" (declared in Chapter 34) do not tell us the actual qualities of the divine nature (for that would imply multiplicity within G-d), but are shorthand for indicating G-d's actions in the world. They also guide us in imitating G-d: as G-d is merciful, so we should be merciful.

• G-d's promise to Moses, "I will make all My goodness pass before you" (v. 19) refers not to the divine nature but to the world as product of divine activity. By appreciating the grandeur of the world, we come to know its Creator through inference.

Indeed, the elaborate peek-a-boo between G-d and Moses expresses the same problem that brought Israel to worship the Golden Calf -- how can finite humanity know the infinite G-d? This is a task as impossible as it is imperative.

In the wrap-up of the episode, the covenant, nearly ruptured, is re-established, with a host of injunctions: Abolish idols. Observe the Sabbath and festivals. Consecrate the first-born and first-fruits. Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk. These finite injunctions hark back to the injunctions with which we started the parashah. Both stand in paradoxical tension with the problem of the finite-infinite relation posed earlier.

As finite creatures, we are fated to embark on a quest that we can never complete. We grasp for the infinite, but every representation of it must necessarily be finite. What, then, are we to do?

First, we must avoid absolutizing the finite. The finite representation that we have-whether a golden calf, or representation of G-d in flowing white curls on the Sistine Chapel, or wrapped in a tallit -- is not the infinite that we seek. Calling it that is idolatry. Avoiding that mistake is the first step towards wisdom.

But then, taking stock of where we are in our quest toward the infinite, we use the finite means at our disposal, and consecrate them for that purpose. The mitzvot and poetic images may be finite, but they are a vehicle toward the infinite. (A Hebrew word for vehicle is merkavah, one of the great mysteries.) As long as we do not divinize or absolutize them, we embrace them and employ them to aid us in that never-ending quest.

 
Dr. Rabbi Leonard Levin is a faculty member of the Academy for Jewish Religion.