(יא) וְדִבֶּ֨ר יהוה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֙ פָּנִ֣ים אֶל־פָּנִ֔ים כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר יְדַבֵּ֥ר אִ֖ישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵ֑הוּ וְשָׁב֙ אֶל־הַֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וּמְשָׁ֨רְת֜וֹ יְהוֹשֻׁ֤עַ בִּן־נוּן֙ נַ֔עַר לֹ֥א יָמִ֖ישׁ מִתּ֥וֹךְ הָאֹֽהֶל׃ {פ}
HaShem would speak to Moses face to face, as one person speaks to another. And he would then return to the camp; but his attendant, Joshua son of Nun, [serving as] deputy, would not stir out of the Tent.
“And HaShem spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his fellow” [Exodus 33:11]. And the intention [is], since certainly, if the Holy One, Blessed be He, had given us the Torah in this world as it is in its place [= the divine realm], the world would not have been able to contain it because of its [the Torah’s] high delicacy. And therefore the Creator, blessed be He, was forced to reduce and clothe it in “70 faces” as it is [stated] in the Zohar: “there is a face and there is a face” [Zohar III.49a], and this is the reduction and the clothing in 70 faces [the 70 facets or layers of interpretation of the Torah (see Numbers Rabbah 13:15-16)] from the aspect of degree to degree until it [= the Torah] is within the limit of understanding in the physical world, so that the ear can hear and the voice can speak.
And now, after the aspect of clothing in 70 faces, it was turned into accounts of legends, but an intelligent man needs to strip it [= the Torah] from its materiality, and to cloth [it with] a spiritual form.
Confronting our words came the allusion in the Torah: “And HaShem spoke to Moses” the clear and profound Torah “face to face”, as if to say that he clothed it “face to face” until now
the totality of the Torah is seen “as a man speaks to his fellow”, [that is:] only stories of legends, just as the speech of “man... to his fellow [man]”, and everyting within [the limits of] what the ear can hear and the mouth can speak [= within the dimension of ordinary human understanding].
And as this, see and sanctify yourself, even if [he is] great in Torah and great in wisdom, he who is a Tsaddik in his generation needs to cling to the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, to grasp that attribute [of reduction] to reduce his clear thoughts and to go out from the mystery of the aspect of Thought to the aspect of Speech, "to warn" [for evil] "and to instruct to the good" [a citation from Bachya Ibn Pekudah. Duties of the Heart 5:86?] to arrange
their aspect, and it suffices for the servant to be as the Lord, as has been mentioned, on this in particular depends the foundation of man’s service, to perform his [divine] service in the general ánd in the particular. And it is found that, if he is always only in the mystery of thought, his service is not complete because it is only by way of the general. And he is as the parable being explained in the Zohar, “so he who grasps the generality and does not know all the effective delicacies that go out from that generality” [Zohar II:176a], and so [is] he who does not know the aspect of the clothing of Divinity in details of particulars, and in all matters of all degrees,
even the low and humble ones. See, this is as if having eaten whole grains and the general being grasped, has necessitated the particular. Now… [a different subject]