‘And He was transfigured before them, and his face shone as the sun, and his garments became white as the light.'
And there in that high mountain the disciples saw an amazing transformation take place. They saw Jesus transfigured before them. Before their eyes His face shone like the sun, and His clothing became ‘white as light', glistening and other worldly, and glorious. And they must have been shaken to the core, for this was not what they had been expecting when they went up with Him into the mount. It was true that Peter had declared Jesus to be ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God'. But those had been words which manifested a conviction that had taken hold of his heart. This was something different. They were seeing that He was. They were being made to recognise as never before the uniqueness of Jesus.
And well they might for there is no other occasion in Scripture where this kind of appearance is seen as being true of a human being. It is seen to be true to some extent of heavenly figures (see Matthew 28:3; Daniel 10:5-6; Revelation 1:13-15), but never of an earthly One. For here there is no thought that it is the presence of God in glory that has caused it. This is no reflected glory, as it was with Moses when his face, and only his face, shone in Exodus 34:29, when he had been face to face with God in the cloud. (We should note also that that was semi-permanent and that Moses brought it down from the mountain with him. It was not a once for all revelation. It was borrowed glory intended to impress the people below. So its source was different, its aim was different, and the detail of the description is very different). The idea here is rather that the inward glory of Jesus is being revealed to His disciples. In that ‘high mountain', having come closer, as it were, to Heaven, what He was in Himself could not remain hidden. The sun was the brightest light then known to man, and beyond man's reach, and spoke of heavenly glory, while garments as white as light indicated total purity and unearthliness. He was thus here being revealed as of absolute glory and purity, and as basically One Who was from Heaven.
The description is, of course, making clear what was seen, not defining it. Glory shone out from Him. The parallels in the other Gospels mainly concentrate on the clothing. Mark says it was unearthly. It was ‘as no scourer on earth could whiten it'. Luke says it was ‘glistening' (exastraptown), a word used in Daniel 10:9 of the glistening feet of a rather spectacular angel. But ‘white as light' here in Matthew goes further. It brings to mind Psalms 104:2, ‘You are clothed with honour and majesty, Who cover yourself with light as with a garment'. This confirms that the aim here is to bring out Jesus' ‘unearthliness', and here in Matthew even His divinity.
Daniel 7:9 speaks of the Ancient of Days (God) as having ‘raiment as white as snow' (compare Matthew 28:3), and this is in fact picked up by copyists who later incorporated it in the Transfiguration text of both Matthew (D and versions) and Mark (A D and versions). But even if we reject those readings on the basis of the evidence the comparison does confirm the heavenly nature of the ‘whiteness'. So Jesus is being revealed as a heavenly figure, and more.
This is backed up by the fact that the word for ‘white' (leukos), when used elsewhere in the New Testament, either refers to the clothing of angels, or else to the clothing of glorified saints who have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. It symbolises what is pure and is not of earth.
However Luke also confirms that ‘the appearance of His countenance was altered', and Matthew here describes it as ‘shining like the sun'. This connects Him with the righteous who will in the future shine forth as the sun in the Kingly Rule of their Father (Matthew 13:43), but here it is seen as His already, not something that He has to receive in the future. He is already the Righteous One (compare Acts 3:14) shining like the sun. One day all the righteous ones, made righteous by His coming and the divine activity upon them (see on Matthew 5:6), will be like Him for they will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Matthew may well also have had in mind the Sun of righteousness Who would arise with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:3).
This growing in righteousness and glory of His people so that they become ‘the righteous' is in fact revealed in similar terms to the Transfiguration in 2 Corinthians 3:18. There it comes about through beholding/reflecting the glory of the Lord. But there it is we and not the Lord whose shining is likened to the shining of Moses' skin.
Comparison can be made with the faces which were ‘as lightning', again of the angels in Matthew 28:3; Daniel 10:9. But as the sun is brighter and more permanent than the lightning, so was His glory seen to be more glorious as compared with theirs. If the ideas are being borrowed and to some extent improved on in order to bring out what is unique, the outshining of the glory of Jesus (compare Hebrews 1:3), they are not just being duplicated. In contrast with them He is the outshining of the glory of God and the ‘stamped out image' of His substance (Hebrews 1:3). As Peter puts it, ‘we were eyewitnesses of His majesty' and ‘He received honour and glory from God the Father' (2 Peter 1:16-17).
However, the main immediate comparison that would probably have been made by the Apostles as they saw Him in His glory on the Mount, would be with the glory of the Lord as He came down on the Tabernacle (and later the Temple). There He met with the children of Israel, and there His holiness was manifested. See Exodus 29:43; Exodus 40:34-35; 1 Kings 8:11. But here the glory is seen rather to have emanated from Jesus, revealing that Jesus Himself was, in His humanity, God's Dwellingplace, and it is important in this regard to note that the glory is seen as being that of Jesus Himself, for the voice of the Father ‘came out of Heaven' (2 Peter 1:18), from the cloud, not from Jesus Himself.
This ‘vision' might well also have reminded the disciples of another vivid scene in Isaiah 6:1-8. That too was a glorious vision of a King in His glory, for although His glory is not mentioned there, it is implied in the fact that the seraphim covered their faces before Him and in the moving of the foundations, and there can be little doubt that the disciples would have seen that appearance in Isaiah in the light of the Shekinah, the revelation of the glory of God in His Dwellingplace. And there too He was accompanied by heavenly attendants who spoke to Him. There too the cloud came down (the house was filled with a smoke cloud), and there too a voice spoke from Heaven, referring to the need to listen (which would not be heeded in the case of Isaiah's listeners). So there are a number of similarities. Of course here on the Mount Jesus could not yet be on a throne because He had not yet been glorified, but that is how He will be depicted in Matthew 25:31. Here He is being depicted rather as the beloved Son, prior to His coronation (Matthew 28:18), but it is probably still in terms of that vision of Isaiah (compare also Isaiah 60:19). This ties in again with Matthew's emphasis on Isaiah and his prophecies in Matthew 3:2 to Matthew 20:28.
Later in Revelation 1:13-16 similar descriptions will be used of Jesus, in a similar manifestation of glory, there described in terms of His face shining as the sun and as walking in the midst of His ‘congregation', (seen in terms of seven ‘congregations' which represent the universal congregation), and having the keys of Death and of Hades. These are concepts which tie in with this whole passage from Matthew 16:13 to Matthew 17:8, which reveals as it does the increasing manifestation of Christ, first as the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16) revealed in power in establishing His congregation and bringing the keys which release from Hades (Matthew 16:18), and then as the glorious Son making known His glory (Matthew 17:2; Matthew 17:5; Revelation 1:17). And all this in terms of tribulation and kingship (Matthew 16:24-25; Matthew 16:28; Revelation 1:9). It is no coincidence that the Apostle John was present at both visions. Revelation 1 was an even greater (because totally heavenly) manifestation of what happened here.