Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Exodus 34:27

Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today Exodus 34:27

- We are on chapter 34, and we are actually on verse 27. And in one sense we have diverged for a minute from talk about the 10 Commandments and the second version of them, and instead we have diverted to talk briefly about the festivals. It’s almost as if the Torah is trying to say, “Please don’t try to categorise me too much in a consistent way. There are lots of different themes here, and they’re all interconnected, one way or another.” But then we have this problem of, what do we make of the difference of the texts when they’re all talking about the same thing? So for example, when we started Exodus chapter 34, at the beginning, the text said, “God says to Moses, ‘I want you to carve two tablets of stone, like the first ones, and I will inscribe on the tablets the very words that I told you last time.’” Now when it looks at here, at verse 27, we have.

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God says to Moses. I want you to write , these things. It’s on the basis of these things, these words, , that I have made this deal with Israel. So what we have appears to be a contradiction. And yet, at the same time, what the Torah consistently is trying to say is, this is both the work of Moses and the work of God. Now, how this partnership actually plays out, is it in the form of dictation, is it the form of inspiration, is left undetermined. So so on we go. And Moses in verse 28 is another 40 days and 40 nights up the mountain. Didn’t eat bread all that time. And didn’t drink water all that time. Now, I suppose most medical people will tell you that going without water for 40 days has a very, very impact on your mental state, even if you can survive it physically. And similarly, not eating bread for 40 days is quite something.

And so that, too, to me says that Moses entered into a kind of a strange supernatural state. But then we have something else. We have this , 40 days and 40 nights. And 40 keeps on cropping up. 40 days and 40 nights. There are the strains of living for 40 years in terms of a generation. There’s the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, which again indicates a generation. 40 seems to me to be not the way we use numbers literally, one, two, three, but as we said before, the seven, recurring idea of seven and the sabbatical, and the recurring threes, triplicates, and similarly, the recurring 40s, 400s, these are all symbolic. They are all trying to convey something in terms of time, and the different, if you like, kinds of time and sequences of time, and how time is so important. You might say this is referring to history, but history is a very modern idea. The Torah uses, as we’ve come across this before, the idea of , of generations, as a timescale. And remember, we don’t have the calendar that we have going back thousands of years, which is creation of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the first millennium of the Common Era. So what exactly do we understand by time?

And I’m mentioning all this because the greatness and the difficulty of the Torah is this ambiguity of how we look at time through our eyes as opposed to time through their eyes. But nevertheless, this is what the Torah has tried to convey. This period of time that he was out of touch, he was in a state, which is frankly almost a supernatural state, and he comes down with this covenant. And it’s essentially the covenant, the deal between God and the children of Israel, that the Torah represents. So it’s not just a book of law. It is a spiritual phenomenon, which is constantly reminding us of a spiritual dimension. Now, verse 29. When Moses comes down Mount Sinai. And the two tablets of stone or of evidence. is aid as a witness. And they are the witness between God and Moses and the people. When Moses comes down the mountain. Moshe had no idea. That his face was lighting up. Now, what does it mean, ? This is very important, because those of you who are fans of Michelangelo will know that Moses is sculptured in such a way as to have two horns. Two horns sticking out of his head. And where do they get this idea of horns sticking out of the head? Is this to do with the devil? The devil has horns. And Moses, although he was a holy man, he was part of the Old Testament of the Jews, of the devils. Where does this idea come from? And the Hebrew word for can mean a horn. is horns. But it can also mean, in addition, a beam, light.

And the word that comes after it is often misunderstood as being light, so they are beams of light. But in fact, means skin. with an ayin is skin. And therefore, it is the skin is shining, not that the skin has turned into two horns. And that’s the whole point about this, of Moses’s visage. That somehow, as a result of speaking to God, his face lights up with beams. And you might call this enlightenment in one sense. So there’s something quite unusual about describing Moses. And so the way that the Renaissance sculptors conveyed him in this horned phase is based on either an intentional misreading or an accidental misreading of the actual words. So in verse 29, . And the English very often, and let’s say, at any rate, in the Sefaria translation, does indeed use the expression, “his face was radiant,” right? It’s rather the skin is radiant on his face. Verse 30. So when Aaron and all the children of Israel see Moses coming down the mountain, his face is shining. But as a result of this, . They were frightened to approach him. He was scary. And there, again, maybe that’s why they assumed that there were horns to scare people rather than just this crazy look on his face. Very often, these crazy looks are associated with religious visions that people have all the time. We think of the famous Teresa of Avila and other Christian women who saw Jesus, and the Virgin Mary, and everything like that.

And their face was shining bright. So Moses in verse 31 sees that they are withdrawing from him. So he calls them back and he says, “Come, come. Come, everybody.” Moshe calls out to them. They come back to him. Aaron, , and all the princes of the tribes. , the community. And it’s interesting. Once again, who are we talking about going up the mountain? Which names are mentioned? Which are not? Moses starts speaking to them. And once he starts speaking to them, it’s the words, it’s the sounds now that become more important than the picture. So communication has all these different elements in it. So after he started speaking to them and they kind of heard his voice, and heard he was perfectly normal as far as they could hear, then they come closer. In verse 32, and after that, , all the children of Israel come forward, , and he starts teaching. He starts teaching all the words that he heard on Sinai. And this does look very much as though he’s doing it to them all at the same time, even though, in fact, elsewhere, the Torah describes this process of communication in which, first of all, it’s Moses to Aaron, then to those close to him, and then to the elders.

And it goes in sequence, repeating the text three times so that there is a reiteration of what the text is. And then it says, verse 33, . And Moshe completed, , this whole process of communicating with them. And this word , to complete, is something that recurs three times. It refers, first of all, with the completion of creation. The heavens and the earth were completed. Then it is going to be mentioned, as we’re going to see in due course, with the completion of the tabernacle, also the same word, , to complete the structure of the tabernacle. And now we have it here the third time in the completion of the Torah. So this term , completion, a holistic combination of what the Torah is about. It’s about the universe, about the world, creation. It’s about locations, whether the location is the land of Israel or the tabernacle or the temple, the place where we come together as a community and identify as a community. And finally, it is the constitution. The rules, the laws, the customs of the people.

And so that kind of tripartite combination, it’s something that’s going to recur again during the period of the prophets. They’re going to talk about this , this strand of three elements that can never be broken. That’s God, the people, and the constitution. And the Torah or the land. Now, Moses in 34 says, “Moshe comes, , before God to speak to him.” And that when he does, . Sorry. Verse 33. I missed out a verse there. Moshe completed, , speaking to everybody, , and he puts a mask or a veil or something that covers his face. Verse 34. What’s this? When Moses is coming before God to speak to him. He takes the veil off, , until he leaves the presence of God. And he comes and he speaks to the Israelites what he has heard. The children of Israel then see this light on Moses’s face, and it’s a problem for them. So Moses then returns the veil, he returns the mask over his face while he is speaking to them. And here ends this whole episode of the 10 Commandments and the variations. It’s interesting that I don’t know of any art that describes Moses with a veil over his face. Why don’t we see pictures of Moses with a veil over his face? We see pictures of Moses. You find it in mediaeval or Renaissance Jewish books and elsewhere. And yet, somehow or other, this thing is skipped over.

It’s also interesting, of course, that you might say this has something to do with the masks on Purim, with disguise, with showing that we all have faces. And another point that keeps on cropping up is that there’s no Hebrew word, I mentioned before, forgive me for repeating it, there’s no Hebrew word for face. The Hebrew word for face is or , the plural of faces, because we all have different faces. And frankly, what this is indicating is that our spiritual face is very different to our physical face. Our spiritual world and our physical world are two parts of us, but very different parts of us. And often, you know, when we lose ourselves in spiritual ecstasy, we almost become unrecognisable. But anyway, here we’ve completed the narrative, basically, of the Book of Exodus. This is the end of the narrative. The children of Israel have now been told, you’ve got to go back into the wilderness for 40 years. For 40 years until your people have, in a sense, purged themselves of the idolatry, of the paganism of Egypt. And you’ll then be a new people ready and able to go up into the land of Israel. We now come to the third version of the tabernacle, the third version of the construction.

So I’ve talked before about the design. I’ve taught about who was called and given the instructions. And this is how everything was actually made and built. And chapter 35 starts out like this. And Moses gathered. The community of Israel. And he said to them. That God has commanded you to do. So we’ve already had the 10 Commandments. And the 10 Commandments have already mentioned the idea of Shabbat. But now we have another version of Shabbat that is made in conjunction with the tabernacle. And this is where we get the idea that there are 49 principles of Jewish law of work that cannot be done on Shabbat. The Shabbat doesn’t actually tell us very much about how we’re supposed to keep it, what we are supposed to do. It just gives this general term of don’t do , but doesn’t clarify what , what work, actually means. But what’s interesting here is this term . This first word of the community. The , the community. And this is going to be used later on several times and becomes a Jewish law, the law of the , that at the end of the period of Sukkot, in some versions, every year, in some versions, at the end of the sabbatical, in some versions, at the end of the Jubilee, the community, everybody, has to come together to hear the Torah. Some versions have it hearing the whole of the Torah, some of it having only part of the Torah.

These are the different opinions. But this idea of is we should come together to read the Torah. Because in fact, there is no command in the Torah about reading the Torah as we do on Shabbat or on two days during the week on festivals. It’s left very, very loosely. And towards the end of the Deuteronomy, we’re going to come back to it. But here have the idea of the , the gathering every together, and the . The , the community. What’s the difference? Well, one is gathering the bodies together. That’s the body of the community. The , like , is the witness of the community, the community agreeing to certain ideals and ideas. So now he says, “I want to reiterate certain important things.” Verse two is , six days, , you can do your work. On the seventh day. is holy, as I said. Something different, something set apart to the rest of the days of the week. It’s a , a Shabbat of Shabbats. Now, normally, Yom Kippur is described as the Shabbat of Shabbats. And people often ask, “What’s more important, Shabbat or Yom Kippur?” And there’s no simple answer to that. Technically, Shabbat is the most important day. Shabbat is the thing that matters more than anything else.

And yet, on the other hand, if Yom Kippur falls on a Shabbat, then, in a sense, Yom Kippur wins, even though we’re not breaking Shabbat in any way, other than in the sense that we’re not eating to celebrate. So that is one of the strange ambiguities. People often ask me, “What’s more important, Shabbat or Yan Kippur?” And in one sense, one has to answer, they are both equal. , a Shabbat of Shabbats, a special one. So it’s not just seven days, this is seven special days. Anybody who does work will die. And again, I need to reiterate that constant use of dying is another way of saying, “This is such an important fundamental, you don’t deserve to live, and as a Jew, so to speak, if you can’t keep the Shabbat in some form or another.” But then it goes on to give the first clarification. And it says something that people often overlook. In verse three, . And it doesn’t say light. It says . And that is to transfer fire, to keep it burning in all your homes on a Shabbat. So people think the only law in the Torah about Shabbat is don’t do work, but in fact it adds this question of transferring fire. What is so special about fire?

Well, in the ancient world, fire was everything. You need it for cooking, for working, for you name it. Somehow or other, fire was, if you like, like oil might be or electricity in our day. It’s how society functions. If you take fire out, it’s almost impossible for the society of those days to function, with all the buildings they put up, with all the arms they made and all the metal they had to, and all the pottery they had to create, and so forth and so on. That these things burning in a kiln required fire. And so on one level, what the Torah is saying is that it is this concept of dealing with fire that is at the root of Shabbat, which is trying to say, “Don’t be as dependent on the society around you and the things that everybody uses. Try not to be dependent on that. Try to free yourself from that total reliance on fire.” In one sense, you might say that is how we understand electricity today.

That without electricity, life grinds to a halt, a standstill, for most people and most societies and most cities can’t function and everything like that. And so electricity is symbolically the equivalent of fire. But it’s not the actual fire that’s the issue but what it represents. Now, this is a very interesting example of how Jewish law develops and how differences arise. With the rise of the Samaritans, who were committed to the Torah and had the Torah as a text, but refused to accept the Babylonian additions of what was called the Oral Law, the interpretation of the law, they did not want to see the law interpreted. And the result was that the Samaritans said, “You do not have fire in your homes at all on a Shabbat.” If it’s dark, you sit in the dark. If you want to warm up your food, it’s too bad. Now, the rabbis of Babylon and the Talmud later on were dealing with the masses, with the populace. And it was important for them to interpret law in such a way as to help the populace. Now, what I haven’t mentioned is that while everybody’s told not to burn fire, in the temple they were burning fire all the time on Shabbat, ‘cause the sacrifices continued. And so the priests in the temple were burning fire.

They did have warmth around them, apart from the fact that the priests were very, very wealthy, and if it was cold in winter, they could always go to their holiday home in Tiberias or in Issachar, or wherever it is they felt like going. And they could have lots of slaves and lots of blankets keeping them warm. But the average person living in the Judean hills in winter, it’s freezing cold. And so the rabbis said, “What this word means, , not transfer fire. It doesn’t mean to say you can’t have fire. All we are saying is you’ve got to prepare it beforehand. So you can prepare your food beforehand, keep it warm. So you can have light all prepared beforehand.” And this was something that neither the priests nor the Samaritans, who objected to the Oral Law, could stomach. Because the priests, at any rate, thought that if we let the rabbi start interpreting the laws about fire, they’ll end up interpreting the laws about sacrifices and tithes to take all our goodies away. We can’t have that. And the Samaritans for their part said, “I’m sorry, we are the pure originalists. We’re not allowing these people to now come along and reinterpret the constitution.” So there this idea of fire also becomes a symbol of the capacity of the rabbis to interpret in such a way that will make life a lot easier for the ordinary people in the street, so to speak.

So there we have . In verse 3 of chapter 35, don’t burn fire in your homes on the Shabbat. And now we move back to the creation of the tabernacle. And because we’ve been through the tabernacle before, I am going, with your permission, to skip certain parts which we have said. So for example, if you just look, I’ll just give you an example of why it’s a repetition. It says, “Moses says to the children of Israel, 'I want you,’” in verse five, “‘to get these donations for everybody.’” Everybody who wants to donate, is the expression, out of the goodness of your heart shall bring this donation to God: the gold and the silver and the brass; and the different materials, the blue and the crimson and the red; and the goat skin and all the skins of strange animals. Notice here, by the way, in verse seven, the tanned skins and dolphin skins. Which word is dolphin? Well, that is in fact the fifth word.

And many translations say it’s dolphins, because it’s possible they got dolphins from around the Sinai Peninsula in the sea in those days. But is sometimes described as a unicorn, or some animal that was created especially for this occasion. Or it could have been some other, almost sort of prehistoric creature that was around at the time. But many translations don’t translate as dolphin. But you might as well say dolphin as you might as well say unicorn, but it’s some sort of skin and there’s some sort of wood. And there’s oil because we’ve got to light the candalabrum. And then there’s oil because we also need to anoint the priests. And there are nice spices we need to have in the tabernacle maybe to mask the smell of the sacrifices. And we need all these beautiful jewels we need on the breastplates of the high priests. And we need everything for the tabernacle to cover it with its beams and its outside courtyard. And of course, we’ve got to have the ark with everything covering it.

The covering of the ark. And then there’s going to be a special table with 12 kind of little sections there for 12 loaves that were put in there. And the candalabrum itself and the different altars. Everything like that, the brass ones and the poles that were needed to lift it up and carry it. And we need all the clothes of everything for the priesthood. We need all these things, which we’ve already described twice. And so in verse 21, it says, . Everybody who volunteered. And you will say, “Who? Is this men only?” Just look down to 22. 22 says, . The men brought in addition to what the women were bringing. So men and women together. And so , therefore, doesn’t only literally mean man. It means people who volunteer, whoever had the desire to volunteer. Some people are mean, some people are charitable, some people are not. Can’t force. We’re not forcing. This has to be voluntary. They give the dedication to the creation of the tabernacle. And what happens is that everybody brings. But the men bring. The women seems to bring first. Or that says.

After or on or in addition or with. And they all come, and they bring everything they could do, not only from what they had around, but also from their jewellery around. Although, remember, we learned after the golden calf they shouldn’t give jewellery, at least the men, although it said the women too. But nevertheless, obviously, they kept them in their safekeeping or for a future date. And they all brought everything. I don’t know who brought the dolphin skins. Must have been fishermen, or maybe there were other people, or they bought them from traders. Anyway, they brought all this stuff and they brought to the tabernacle, men and women together. And if we look at verse 25, we have this famous statement. And a woman with skill. With skill with her hands. They could spin things. They could do other things in different colours and forms. There were skilled women, and they were participating.

And similarly, there were women who excelled in all other kinds of skills, in verse 26. In the weaving and the sowing and things like that. And in addition to them, finally, it was, in verse 27, the , who were the heads of the tribes, who were the wealthy men, they brought the valuable stones and dedicated. There were 12 stones for each member of each tribe, and they had to bring the stones. And once again, I go back and reiterate. This is the third time again. In verse 29. Every man and woman who is volunteering what they want to bring, whatever it is their skill might be. This is sort of a principle in Jewish law interpretation of and . A general rule, , and , a specific rule. A general statement, all humans, and the specific statement, men and women. And so specifying this is, previously, there was a general statement about contributing, whether it is skins or garments or clothes or whatever it is, but in addition you have this general statement.

Anything. Anything is of value can be used one way or another in construction. And then in verse 30, Moses calls upon the two people. Well, here it’s just one of them. Basically, it is Bezalel. Bezalel, of course, as you know, is the name given to the first college of arts in Israel. Bezalel, then Uri, the son of Uri, the son of Hur. The son of this man who disappears somewhere after the golden calf episode, but held Moses’ hands up in the end. The battle against Amalek. And he will have the skill in order to bring all this thing together. And in verse 34, he’s going to have an assistant whose name is Oholiab . And there we have this indication of who the guy is who’s going to bring it. And the next three pages goes on and on, describing everything that we’ve already been over, explaining the details of everything of the tabernacle. And so I just want to skip quickly to chapter 38. Chapter 38, verse 8. If we can go down there, I want to just mention one interesting thing that is pulled out out of the blue and doesn’t appear to make much sense. But here we are, in verse 8 of chapter 38.

And in addition to everything we have talked about in the actual construction of the tabernacle, we missed out one thing. What is the thing they missed out? The , kind of a huge, big laver. It’s huge, big sea, if you like. It’s almost like a sauna or like a jacuzzi. It is this brass bowl of water that was used for purification. And with it, it had a stand. So it stood all on a stand, and it was made out of . The mirrors of the . translated here as who performed tasks. But the word , we’ll know that this comes from the word , the army. The army of Israel. Is this telling us that women served in the army in those days too? Most people would throw their arms up in horror at the prospect. But it’s interesting that these might have been the Amazons or the strong, tough women who made sure that they did everything properly in the tabernacle and didn’t make a mess of anything. But can mean something else. It can mean just gathering rounds. That they were welcome to come if they wanted to come and be there and to enjoy and to be part of the whole thing. They were an essential part of the whole thing. It wasn’t just men in the men’s section and women in the women’s section.

They were there together. But also has another word connected to it, which isn’t spelt in exactly the same way. It’s with a vav, not with a bet, but that’s quite common to interchange letters. From , which means also a will or something that I want or a wish. And it therefore can mean those who came to appeal to God, to pray before God. And they had mirrors for beautification. And all the commentators say, “What? Something used for vanity is used in the construction of the tabernacle? That can’t make sense.” The answer that is often given was that, after the golden calf episode, where people gave up their gold jewellery, ‘cause that was used for the making of the golden calf, they also tried to limit their sense of vanity. And so they put their mirrors aside and used some other form of making sure that they looked beautiful: looking at each other, advising each other, or helping each other. But it also indicates that something that, technically speaking, is vain can be used for good purposes. Can be used for, if you like, beautifying to enhance the relationship, to enhance marriage.

It can be used to make sure we are clean, or to make sure that in some way we are presentable. So one should not rummage something and say, “Oh, you know, that’s vanity of vanities,” because everything that can be used badly can be used well, including mirrors, and that’s why they’re here in this particular position. So this is the only important point that I want to make other than to give you another brief statement. If we go on to 39, verse 32, which is something that I mentioned a bit earlier, and that was to say that the word , and they completed, is something of the tabernacle. And here it is in verse 32. Chapter 39, verse 32. And the work on the tabernacle was completed like, the heavens and the earth were completed. And the children of Israel did. Whatever God commanded, they actually did. And finally, this is the last thing that when at the end of the very chapter of the Book of Exodus, when they mention the fact of the completion of the whole process, it says the following. Once again, in verse 35, we have, sorry, it’s in verse 34. We have the idea that when people come in, they wash themselves before they go in, to make sure they’re clean, into the tabernacle.

And then the cloud of God appears over the tabernacle to finally dedicate it. It’s like God giving his final approval of what goes on. And then Moses was not able to come into the , when the pillar of cloud was on top of it, because , the glory of God, filled the tabernacle. Now, that’s also a little strange because surely Moses had this close relationship with God, was close to him on everything. Why was he not able to go in? And this probably is an indication of the fact that Moses, in addition to his relationship with God, was also just a human being and one of the same of us. He was not superhuman in any other way, although he might have had this amazing superhuman encounter with God. But when the cloud rose. In verse 36, when the cloud lifted, everybody started going on their way. And if the cloud didn’t lift. They didn’t move until it lifted. So here’s another feature which seems to be contradictory. We know the idea, we’ve mentioned it before, that the pillar of cloud led them at night. A pillar of fire led them at night. The pillar of cloud led them during the daytime. And this was how they moved, and when the cloud stopped or the pillar of fire stopped, it stopped. But the implication is that when the pilar of cloud stopped and rested on the tabernacle, Moses can go into the tabernacle. So where was Moses? What was he doing? Where was he communicating with God?

These are, if you like, problems that you have to find a way of interpreting exactly what the text means. And one way of understanding it is there is a distinction between the movement of these clouds and fire as guiding the people as a sign that God’s presence is there and the actual mechanics of Moses, how he encounters God. And there is the communal encounter with God, and there is the personal encounter with God. Sometimes Moses functions as the leader of the people, and sometimes he functions as an individual. So in verse 38, the book concludes . The cloud was over the tabernacle during the day. The pillar of fire was at night. And the children of Israel were aware of this and saw it throughout their travels of the 40 years in the wilderness. And here endeth the book of Exodus. So we will then move on now to the questions and answers.

Q&A and Comments:

Rita, I’m sorry, yes, the title of the music came from Schubert.

Lindy. Beautifully played.

Q: Thank you. Susan. Why is the word translated as commandments and not words?

A: Well, the truth, Susan, is that does actually mean words. But like many words, it also means other things. It means principles. It doesn’t actually commandments. Why do we call it commandments? Unfortunately, that we have to thank the translators, the Christian translators of the Bible. Because we call it . We don’t call it the commands. And so is a multipurposes word. Richard says, “And verse 34, 32 imparted all the instructions.” So yes, is that the 10 commandments only, or all of the Torah? Now, I suppose you could say, if it would be the 10 Commandments only, what does Moses need to be up 40 days and 40 nights for it? If it’s just the 10 tablets, that’s pretty easy and quickly to deal with. And so we have to conclude that there was more than just the 10 Commandments. But then some people say, not only was there the whole of the Torah, but remember, according to some sources in the Talmud, let alone in the Torah, the Torah itself was not completely written down until either during or at the end of 40 years. And then you have the idea of the Oral Law, what wasn’t even mentioned there. So when we talk about Torah, we talk about three different layers. We talk about the fundamental principles that were given initially as the contract, the , the tablets of , of stone, that are the sign of God’s relationship with us. Then we have the Torah, and that was given on Sinai and was an expansion during the 40 days, I suppose, of what the 10 Commandments were. And then you have the additions. And there were other additions made. Several times Moses goes back to God for another explanation to deal with the problem. And the Oral Law. And all these are part of the whole thing.

Carla likes what I like about faces. And thank you, everybody, and, please, God, we will meet again next week.