What a spectacle was this, on the slopes of Lebanon, with light transcending that of the moonlight shining in the upper heights! And what converse! Possibly that transfiguration was an example of the way in which Adam and all his race might have passed into heaven, had not death come on us all through sin; and therefore it was the greater proof of the love of our dear Lord, when He deliberately turned from all the radiant light and took the way of the cross. His death is here called an exodus: such is the Greek word rendered decease. How much these two great souls, Moses and Elijah, had to say about it: the one representing the law; the other the prophets.
Moses would remind Him of the lamb that would be slain before the children of Israel could escape from Egypt; of the rock that must be smitten, before the water could flow forth for the thirsty crowds; of the serpent that must be fixed on the pole, before the dying Israelites could look and live.
Elijah would remind the Lord of Psalm 22., beginning with a wail and ending with praise; of Isa 53:1-12., finishing with a burst of triumph; and many another sacred and familiar passage.
And after all it was only an exodus, the going forth of His spirit from the Time-sphere to the Eternal; from contact with a very weary world to victory and joy-mending. Lighted by the Shechinah glory; following through the Red Sea of Blood; hastening to the morning, with its vision of enemies strewn dead on the seashore. The memory of this talk so far robbed death of its terror, in the heart of one of the disciples at least, that afterward he described his own death as an exodus (2Pe 1:15).