Must you not show respect for Manoah, the Old Testament judge.… Manoah was overwhelmed by the sight of God in a vision. “Wife,” he said, “we are lost, we have seen God”—meaning by this that even a vision of God is too much for human beings, let alone God’s nature.
Seen God: Not in his own person, but in the person of his messenger. The Israelites, in those days, imagined they should die if they saw an angel, taking occasion perhaps from those words spoken by the Lord to Moses, Ex. 33. 20, No man shall see me and live. But the event demonstrated that it was but a groundless imagination.
[AD 390] Gregory of Nazianzus on Judges 13:22