Commentary on the Torah

by Richard Elliott Friedman

34:29. transformed. Coming out of the fiery top of the mountain, and back from his once-in-human-history encounter with God, Moses is transformed in some way that is unfortunately obscured in a difficult Hebrew passage (34:30,35). It has often been understood to mean that Moses’ face beams light, and it has been erroneously visualized in numerous artistic depictions as a horned Moses, the most famous of which is Michelangelo’s Moses. William Propp has argued persuasively that it more probably means that Moses’ face is in some way disfigured (from the fire? from the experience of encountering the deity?). Whatever it is about Moses’ skin, though, it is a marker, from this point on in the narrative, of Moses’ exceptional position. After having beheld God, he has himself become fearful for other humans to behold. For the rest of the narrative in Exodus (and in the next three books of the Hebrew Bible), he is to be pictured wearing a veil. He removes it only when speaking with the deity and when revealing the divine commandments to the people. Moses’ continuing communication with God, moreover, is to take place inside the precincts of the Tabernacle, a place that is forbidden to the lay population. That is, the book of Exodus introduces a series of layers in a channel to God: Moses’ veil, then the Tabernacle, which is a series of tents within tents (the prket, the miškn, the ’hel, the leather cover; see the comment on 26:33) into which Moses enters and from which he returns wi...