Moses’ Shining or Horned Face?

All translations of verses are NRSV with adjustments unless otherwise noted. The verb appears a third time at the end of the story:

^{שמות לד:לה} וְרָאוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה כִּי קָרַן עוֹר פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה וְהֵשִׁיב מֹשֶׁה אֶת הַמַּסְוֶה עַל פָּנָיו עַד בֹּאוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ.

^{Exod 34:35} The Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was qāran-ed; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

δεδόξασται ἡ ὄψις τοῦ χρωτὸς τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ. The verb is a form of the verb doxazō (“to glorify”). The English is from Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, eds., A New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 76. See, however, William H. C. Propp, Exodus 19-40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 2A (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 596, who deems the LXX translation a “paraphrase for ‘horned.’”

ܐܙܕܗܝ ܡܫܥܐ ܕܐܦܘܗܝ. The verbal root here is ז.ה.י. Mark R. Meyer, George A. Kiraz, and Joseph Bali, The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible with English Translation (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2017), 196-197.

From ס.ג.י. Bernard Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos to Exodus, Aramaic Bible 7 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), 98. Israel Drazin thinks that Onqelos “does not visualize Moses with beams or horns, for if so he would have used the language in Deut 33:2 (Targum Onkelos to Exodus [New York: Ktav, 1990], 319 n. 44). Onqelos employs the same construction in Deut 34:7.

From ב.ה.ר. See Michael Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus, Aramaic Bible 2 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1994), 260.

Michael L. Klein, The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch, 2 vols., AnBib 76 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 1:88, 181.

The is from נ.ה.ר. Martin McNamara and Robert Hayward, Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus, Aramaic Bible 2 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1994), 141. In the Neofiti 1 MS, the margins have an alternative שבחו זיווהון דאפ׳, “the splendor of [his] face became greater,” which is the reading in the Fragmentary Targum.

From י.ק.ר, and note the variant spelling of ziv. This is the text of the Shechem Synagogue MS 3. The British Museum MS simply reads like the Hebrew, קרן עור אפיו. See Abraham Tal, התרגום השומרוני לתורה: מהדורה ביקורתית [The Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch: A Critical Edition] מקורות ומחקרים בלשון העברית ובתחומים הסמוכים לה [Texts and Studies in the Hebrew Language and Related Subjects] 4 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1980), 1.368–369; see the apparatus for other variants.

A similar situation obtains in early Jewish and Christian interpretation of Genesis 3:21. See Brent A. Strawn, “bĕ-rēʾšît, ‘With “Wisdom,”’ in Genesis 1:1 (MT),” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (forthcoming).

Cf. James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 727. Propp, Exodus 19–40, 620, thinks the translations in the Targumim are “deliberate exegetical misreading[s] of ʾȏr ‘light’ for ʿȏr ‘skin.’” But far from being simple midrashic playfulness, these translators are likely trying to render the Hebrew text in an understandable, perhaps even paraphrastic, manner, considering the difficult imagery found here.

In Exodus 34:29-30, 35, the verb ק.ר.נ is in the qal form while in Psalm 69:32 (see below) it is inflected as a hiphʿil participle. Denominative verbs are found within the qal and niphal stems, but they are most common in piel and hiphʿil (see Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 373, 391, 410-14, 443-45 (§§22.5; 23.5; 24.4, 27.4, respectively).

As preserved in a comment from Jerome; see John William Wevers, Exodus, Septuaginta II.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 383; Propp, Exodus 19-40, 623.

Nevertheless, unlike Aquila, his translation lacks an equivalent for “skin.” Perhaps Jerome deemed “skin” redundant in some fashion; alternatively, maybe Jerome, no less than other interpreters and translators, struggled with how the skin of Moses’ face could be horned, even if he was quite certain qāran was related to horns. The “skin problem” will be discussed in depth below.

See Ruth Mellinkofff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), esp. 13–17.

Hebrew text plus the English translation from Martin Lockshin, available (ad loc.) on AlHaTorah.org. For a discussion of medieval Jewish responses to Christian readings, including Rashbam’s approach, see Shaye D. Cohen, “Does Rashi’s Torah Commentary Respond to Christianity? A Comparison of Rashi With Rashbam and Bekhor Shor,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman, JSJSup 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 449–472.

Nevertheless, here too the Vulgate translates latter phrase as cornua in manibus eius, “horns in his hands.”

See, e.g., Margit L. Süring, The Horn-Motif in the Hebrew Bible and Related Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Iconography, AUSDDS 4 (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1980).

This is not to suggest that gods were always horned; they were not. For horned humans, see below.

Notably, Naram-Sin is apparently the first king to use the divine determinative for god in front of the writing of his name, signaling his divinity. See Walter Farber, “Die Vergöttlichung Naram-Sins,” Or 52 (1983): 67–72; Zainab Bahrani, Mesopotamia: Ancient Art and Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2017), 118, 123. For more on Mesopotamian kingship and divine status, see Jacob Klein, “Sumerian Kingship and the Gods,” in Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, ed. Gary Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis, BJS 346 (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006), 115–31; and Peter Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria,” in Beckman and Lewis, eds., Text, Artifact, and Image, 152–88.

Bahrani, Mesopotamia, 125.

Katja Goebs, “Crowns,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed. Donald B. Redford, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1:321–26 (324).

See Gary A. Rendsburg, “Moses as Equal to Pharaoh,” in Beckman and Lewis, eds., Text, Artifact, and Image, 201-19, esp. 216-18. The precise status of the pharaoh (divine or semi-divine) is a matter of no small debate. See, inter alia, David B. O’Connor and David P. Silverman, eds., Ancient Egyptian Kingship, PdÄ 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1995); and, far more briefly, Brent A. Strawn, “Pharaoh,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 631-36. Note the important work by Labib Habachi, Features of the Deification of Ramesses II, ADAIK 5 (Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin, 1969).

Recently, Leon R. Kass, Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 569–71, has reiterated the argument that the presence of the word “skin” eliminates the idea that Moses had horns atop his head.

See Propp, Exodus 19-40, 623. Note also his earlier studies: “The Skin of Moses’ Face—Transfigured or Disfigured?” CBQ 49 (1987): 375-86, popularized in “Did Moses Have Horns?” BR 4/1 (1988): 30-37, 44.

See also Exodus Rabbah 47:6, which speaks of קרני ההוד “glory-horns.”

See, e.g., Menahem Haran, “The Shining of Moses’ Face: A Case Study in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Iconography,” in In the Shelter of Elyon: Essays on Ancient Palestinian Life and Literature in Honor of G. W. Ahlström, ed. W. Boyd Barrick and John R. Spencer, JSOTSup 31 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1984), 159-73. Propp, Exodus 19-40, 620, states that “in Mesopotamian iconography, a stack of horns bears some relationship to the gods’ radiant aura called melammu,” and cites the horn = light equation in Ps 132:17. See further Shawn Zelig Aster, The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and Its Biblical Parallels, AOAT 384 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2012).

Haran, “The Shining,” 168. Further Aster, Unbeatable Light.

See Haran, “The Shining,” 172 n. 19; A. L. Oppenheim, “Akkadian pul(u)ḫ(t)u and melammu,” JAOS 63 (1943): 31-34; and, extensively, Aster, Unbeatable Light.

The point is made explicit in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan which reads:

ומשה לא חכים ארום אשתבהר זיו איקונין דאנפוי דהוה ליה מן זיו איקר שכינתא מייי בזמן מללותיה עימיה.

Moses did not know that the splendor of the features of his face shone because of the splendor of the Glory of the Shekinah of the Lord at the time that he spoke with him.

Cf. Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus, 260; cf. Grossfeld, Targum Onqelos to Exodus, 99 n. 20.

Perhaps one could compare the later Christian notion of receiving the stigmata, especially if Propp’s interpretation of qāran as involving disfigurement or wounding is accurate.

The marginal glosses in Targum Neofiti are intriguing here: in each case where the main text has the splendor of the glory of Moses’ face, the margin has a variant of “they praised the glory of his face.” See McNamara and Hayward, Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus, 141 nn. t, u, and dd. As is well known, א.ר.י, is often used to describe proper behavior before God.

See Kass, Founding God’s Nation, 570.

Propp goes so far to suggest that “the veiled, shining Moses may be regarded as a walking Tabernacle, manifesting and yet concealing Yahweh’s splendor” (Exodus 19-40, 621). Cf. ibid., 623, where Propp writes that Moses’ face, “branded by Yahweh—whether horned, beaming or hardened—becomes the Mask of God.”

Kass, Founding God’s Nation, 571. Kass finds the notion “disquieting” and likely not “what the Lord intended” (ibid.). Cf. the marginal glosses in Neofiti, discussed above.

R. G. Robertson, “Ezekiel the Tragedian,” in OTP 2:812. The passage is from a dream Moses has, from which he wakens “in terror” (line 82). In what follows, Raguel (Jethro) interprets the dream for Moses, stating: “For you shall cause a mighty throne to rise, / and you yourself shall rule and govern men. / As for beholding all the peopled earth, / and things below and things above God’s realm: / things present, past, and future you shall see” (lines 85–98; ibid., 2:812). Note the study by Kristine J. Ruffatto, “Raguel as Interpreter of Moses’ Throne Vision: The Transcendent Identity of Raguel in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian,” JSP 17 (2008): 121–39.

Kass, Founding God’s Nation, 572.

According to scholars, these various texts likely stem from different traditions/sources.

A somewhat similar situation is found in Deuteronomy, where what Moses leaves behind, is “this book of the Torah.”

See Stephen Bertman, “The Antisemitic Origin of Michelangelo’s Horned Moses,” Shofar 27 (2009): 95–106; Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 737; as well as Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses, 121–37, who notes ambiguity in the meaning of the horns: there were “horns of honor” but also “horns of dishonor.” I confess that if Bertman is correct in his assessment that Michelangelo’s statue was meant to be anti-Semitic, I think it likely that the master artist failed miserably. Anyone who has stood before that great work of art is impressed, not horrified, by its rendition of Moses. I therefore part company with Bertman’s interpretation. See further Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses, 127-131, for some images, with dates from the thirteenth century forward, that reflect negative associations of the horned tradition. The depictions are quite different than Michelangelo’s Moses. For his part, Bertman thinks Jerome’s translation may already reflect a personal bias against Jews (“Antisemitic Origin,” 100).

For more on ancient Near Eastern iconography and the Hebrew Bible, see the classic study by Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (repr. ed., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), who states: “Iconography compels us to see through the eyes of the ancient Near East” (8).