The "Hand" of God

In Judaism, its forbidden to represent God as an image. Curiously, however, we do see stand-ins for God throughout the torah, such as a burning bush, or as a cloud with fire in it. One of the more enjoyable images for me is the Hand of God...literally. There is a synagogue for the 3rd century (which is now in modern-day Syria) called the "Synagogue at Dura Europos". It is filled with mural after mural depicting scenes from the Bible, very similar to what we're used to seeing from Giotto in his depiction of the life of Jesus...but created by Jews thousands of years before Christ. In several murals you can see an actual hand reaching out of a cloud down to people below; that is the Hand of God. So interesting, especially at that early history of the Jews, that God is represented by a Hand. Check out this example of
God freeing the people of Israel from Egypt: It looks like Man really IS created in the image of God. It's just that God is literally out of the picture, with the exception of his arms, which gesture from the top of the "picture plane". God's outstretched arms are a necessary storytelling device in this panoramic scene, for with God's arms, you'd just see a bunch of people escaping Egypt. The artist, who I'm sure had a familiarity of the prohibition of representing an image of God, made a representation of God's arms anyway. Perhaps that's an important point: it's really God's FACE that into which we're not supposed to look.

Remember the scene when Moses goes to the top of Mount Sinai to get the ten commandments from God, but he had to turn his face away from God? You can't look God in the face, lest you die. But what about looking at God's arms? Arms are a little less descriptive. We recognize people by their faces. Could you recognize even those people most close to you simply by looking their arms? It'd bet not. Arms are practically generic, so it's safe to safe arms are practically the same; they're not useful for indentifying people (or God), so it's safe to put God's "arms" in a picture. The important thing with is discussion, however, is to make the point that we need to see a picture of God's arms to understand that, as it says in the torah (and I'm paraphrasing) "You shall leave Egypt like an outstretched arm"... It's the words that you find inside of the mezuzzah. If you look carefully, you can see that God is also wearing tefillin (of course, it could also be cracks in the wall)

I really wish that there were other examples of God's Hand in Jewish art, because the hand is so expressive. One of my favorite artists is George de la Tour, mainly for his intricate use of expressive hand poses. My favorite painting by him is the "Cheat with the Ace of Clubs". It as all sorts of interesting hand poses which tell a great story. Wouldn't it be great if God, who is such an expressive character in the Bible, got a few more expressive shots of his hands? Imagine a visual story told exclusively with hand gestures. Could it be done? I wonder if God had no voice, but just the use of his "hands"; how would he command the Israelites? I've always enjoyed silent graphic novels. Could we treat the relationship between God and Moses as a silent graphic novel? The wheels in my head are spinning...