Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 3:13

"and [are] not as Moses, [who] put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look stedfastly on the end of that which was passing away:" — 2 Corinthians 3:13 (ASV)

And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face.—The Apostle, it must be remembered, has in his thoughts either the Septuagint version of Exodus 34:33, or an interpretation of the Hebrew answering to that version. (See Note on 2 Corinthians 3:7.)

What was the object of this putting on of the veil? The English version of that text suggests that it was to hide the brightness from which they shrank. But the interpretation that St. Paul follows presents a very different view.

Moses put the veil over his face so that they might not see the end, the fading away of that transitory glory. For them, it was as though it were permanent and unfading. They did not see—this is St. Paul’s way of allegorizing the fact stated—that the whole system of the Law, as symbolized by that brightness, had only a fugitive and temporary being.

Could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished.—Better, look on the end of that which was perishing. Literally, the words state the fact: they could not see how the perishing glory ended. In the interpretation of the parable, St. Paul seems to say that what was true of those older Israelites was true also of their descendants.

They could not see the true end of the perishing system of the Law—its aim, purport, consummation. There is, perhaps, though most recent commentators have refused to recognize it, a half-allusive reference to the thought expressed in Romans 10:4, that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness; or, in 1 Timothy 1:5, that the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart. Had their eyes been open, they would have seen in the fading away of the old glory of the decaying letter the dawn of a glory that excelled it. And in the thought that this was the true end of the Law we find the ground for the Apostle’s assertion that he used great plainness of speech. He had no need to veil his face or his meaning, for he had no fear that the glory of the gospel of which he was a minister should fade away.