Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 33:22

"and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by:" — Exodus 33:22 (ASV)

And will cover thee with my hand— Kalisch observes with justice that the mysteriousness of this obscure section “attains its highest climax in the three last verses” (Exodus 33:21–23).

Human language is, by its very nature, unfit for the expression of sublime spiritual truths and necessarily clothes them in a materialistic garment, which is alien to their ethereal nature.

All that we can legitimately gather from this verse and the next is that Moses was directed to a certain retired position, where God miraculously both protected him and shrouded him while a manifestation of His glory, transcendent in character, passed by, and that Moses was allowed to see, not the full manifestation, but the sort of after-glow it left behind, which was as much as human nature could endure.