"The Lord Shew His Face to Thee": The Priestly Blessing and the Countenance Revealed
Old Testament: Numbers 6:24-26
... The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord shew his face to thee, and have mercy on thee. The Lord turn his countenance to thee, and give thee peace.
Old Testament, also: Psalms 4:7
The light of thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us: thou hast given gladness in my heart.
New Testament: Apocalypse 1:16
... And from his mouth came out a sharp two edged sword: and his face was as the sun shineth in his power.
The connection
The Aaronic blessing prays for something Israel could not yet have: God's face shown, His countenance turned toward them. The psalmist answers as though the prayer has already landed, not merely shown but "signed upon us," a seal pressed into wax, God's own light stamped onto the one praying. What was asked for in Numbers and claimed as already given in the Psalms, John finally sees with his own eyes: a face "as the sun shineth in his power," no longer a blessing spoken over an assembly or a light spoken of in prayer, but the countenance itself, unmistakable and overwhelming, exactly what three verses of priestly formula had been asking for since the wilderness.
Moral sense
Augustine reads the "signed upon us" of Psalm 4:7 through the image of a coin stamped with the king's likeness: man was made in God's image and defaced it by sin, and the light of God's countenance is what a "new birth" stamps back onto the soul (Exposition on Psalm 4). The blessing asked for in Numbers is not a distant favour but an interior re-marking, restoring an image already placed there and worn away.
Anagogical sense
What John sees briefly and overwhelmingly in a vision is named outright as the destiny of the blessed: they "see him as he is," face to face (CCC 1023). The blessing Aaron was commanded to speak over Israel was, without either priest or people fully realising it, already naming the beatific vision.
The Fathers
Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 4: "stamped on us, as a penny is stamped with the king's image... man was made after the image and likeness of God, which he defaced by sin: therefore it is his true and eternal good, if by a new birth he be stamped."
Warrant
Augustine's Exposition on Psalm 4:7 is a genuine, direct patristic source for that verse specifically; the wider trajectory connecting it to Numbers 6 and Apocalypse 1:16 is my own construction, not a Father's own argument. Checked in the Greek: the verbs share a root, epiphanai (from epiphaino) at Numbers 6:25 in the Septuagint, the Lord making His face shine, and phainei (from phaino) at Apocalypse 1:16, where the face shines as the sun in its strength.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1023.
The verses
Numbers 6:24 · Numbers 6:25 · Numbers 6:26 · Psalms 4:7 · Apocalypse 1:16
