11-14 The children of Israel, because of that veil, never saw the light of the old covenant fade out and vanish into nothing. Had not the veil been there, they would have looked right on to the end of this covenant of finiteness and death, and so discerned its spiritual sense, but that veil represents the hardening of their hearts and the dimness of their eyes, whereby they cannot discern the spiritual sense of the scriptures.
15 When Moses is read in their synagogues, the veil is on their hearts still.
16 For the real meaning of that ministry is a spiritual one. As the light of the old covenant which defines the doom of sin fades and dwindles and at last dies away to nothing, the dawn of the new covenant rises and broadens.
17-18 For the glory of the new (of righteousness) far exceeds the old (of death). It is that glory which we behold when we look beyond the end of the finite and transitory and behold the eternal splendour of that which abides and never passes away. Then, like Moses, who in the divine presence removed the veil again which he had worn in the presence of the people, so we behold the glory of the Lord; and, looking, are changed — changed from the perishable and mortal — into the image of His glory, ever deepening and broadening from glory to glory, the image that is to say of the eternal Spirit. For when the Bible says “When Moses went in to the Lord, he took off the veil,” (Exo xxxiv. 34) the Lord there means the Spirit — the Spirit which has reached us, the Spirit which has freed us from the law of sin and death.