Musar על שמות 34:29

By following this approach we can also understand the Midrash in Eichah Rabbati, 2,6, on Lamentations 2,3: "He has cut down in blazing anger כל קרן ישראל, all the might of Israel." The Midrash comments that there are ten קרנות, i.e. "strongholds" termed Keren. Abraham is one such קרן; he is referred to in Isaiah 5,1, as כרם היה לידידי בקרן בן שמן, "My beloved had a vineyard on a fruitful hill." Isaac is also known as a קרן, in Genesis 22,13 נאחז בסבך בקרניו, "caught in the thicket by its horns." We find a reference to Joseph as קרן in Deut. 33,17 where his קרן is described as וקרני ראם קרניו וכו' "He has thorns like the horns of a wild ox." Moses is referred to as קרן in Exodus 34,29: כי קרן עור פניו, "for the skin of his face emitted rays (like a horn)." The Torah is also described as קרן, since we read in Chabakuk 3,4: קרנים מידו לו, "it gives off rays of light in every direction." Priesthood is referred to as קרן, in Psalms 112,9, קרנו תרום בכבוד, "his horn is exalted in honor." (Possibly the word כבוד, used here which is also used in connection with the garments of the High Priest, is the reason the Midrash interprets this verse as alluding to the priesthood.) The Levites collectively are referred to as קרן in Chronicles 1 25,5: כל אלה בנים להימן חוזה המלך בדברי האלוקים להרים קרן. [The chapter traces the genealogy of the tribe of Levi Ed.] Prophecy is called קרן, in Samuel I 2,6: רמה קרני בה'. (Hannah prophesies about Samuel's future). The Holy Temple is also described as קרן, as in Psalms 22,22: מקרני רמים עניתני. Israel itself is also described as קרן in Psalms 148,14: וירם קרן לעמו. Some people add that the קרן of the Messiah should also be included, per Samuel I 2,10: ויתן עוז למלכו, וירם קרן משיחו. The Midrash continues that all of these "horns" were placed on the heads of the Jewish people, but they forfeited them due to their sins. This is alluded to in the verse we quoted earlier from Lamentations 2,3 that in His blazing anger G–d cut down every קרן of Israel. These "horns" subsequently were given to the Gentile nations, as is written in Daniel 7,20: ועל קרניא עשר די בראשה ואחרי די סלקת ונפלו מן קדמיה. "About the ten horns which were on its head, and the other one which came and fell." In verse 24 of the same chapter Daniel speaks about ten kings and kingdoms arising from the fallen horns. Provided Israel repents, G–d will restore these horns to their rightful place viz. Psalms 75,11: "And I will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up." This refers to the horns that the “Righteous One of the world,” i.e. G–d, had cut off. When is the time that He will restore them to their righful position? It is when G–d will raise the horn of His anointed: "He will raise the horn of His anointed" (Samuel I 2,10). Thus far the Midrash in Eychah Rabbati.

A person has two kinds of skin that serve as clothing/protection for man. One is the skin/leather of animals, i.e. shoes. The other is his own skin. We find in Job, 10,11, עור ובשר תלבישני, "You have dressed me with skin and flesh." The latter is the material part of man that he shares with the animal kingdom. Man whose physical origin was אדמה i.e. "holy soil" should have been garbed in כתנות אור, the word אור spelled with the letter א. The fact that this word was spelled with the letter ע instead, represented the demotion of man. He was now clothed in skin and flesh being compared to the animals since he had sinned. Moses ascended to a level where his face reflected אור as had been intended for all of mankind (compare Exodus 34,29 et al, כי קרן עור פניו). The word קרן אור suggests that the word for skin should have been spelled with the letter א in the first place. He gave off rays of light. He had been predisposed for such stature from the day he had been born, to wit his mother's comment at his birth "she saw that he was good" (Exodus 2,2). Our sages comment that this was in response to the whole house having been filled with light (Sotah 12). One of the superior qualities of Moses' prophecy was that he received communication from G–d without his body undergoing any kind of weakening, as we have explained elsewhere. This was a level Joshua had not attained. If Joshua stood on ground described as holy, then the ground Moses stood on must be viewed as the holiest of holy. This is why Moses had to take additional steps to sanctify himself.

Once Jacob died, Moses became the second "husband" of the relevant שכינה [presumably the "upper" one, בינה, seeing that Moses had attained 49 of the 50 levels of בינה Ed.]. However, this union could last only while Moses lived on this earth, since upon the death of a wife's second husband she "returns" to her former husband, having only been on "loan" during the interval. Since Jacob was by then in the Holy Land, Moses, automatically had to remain outside the Holy Land. The reason that Jacob was buried body and bones in ארץ ישראל is that he represented the גוף, body, of the ארץ של ישראל סבא, as we have mentioned before. Joseph, being the extension of his father, was the extension of the גוף, limbs or bones. These "bones" symbolize the spiritual forces or permutations of G–d's Ineffable Name that radiate in all directions from the emanation בינה, enabling a physical universe to take shape. A צדיק, as such is also called צבאות, part of G–d's armies or executive arm. It was therefore appropriate that Joseph's bones rather than his entire body were interred in ארץ ישראל. None of this reflects negatively on Moses. On the contrary, whereas Moses was able to establish a union with the "upper" level of the שכינה during his life on earth, Jacob established his union with that level of the שכינה only after he had departed. We find an allusion to Moses' intimacy with that part of the שכינה in Numbers 7,89, where the way the Torah describes Moses' being at home in the אהל מועד, the visible manifestation of the בינה on earth, is most striking. Moses did not need to be invited in; he acted as if he were the owner of that domain. The author finds in the number of the 600,000 Jews that left Egypt allusions to the radiations of the various combinations of G–d's Name in all the six directions of the compass, proof that Moses led the people by means of the power inherent in the emanation בינה. If Moses was already on such a level while his soul was still enshrined in his body, it is clear that once Moses died, his soul would ascend to an even higher region than the level represented by בינה. That level, which we have described elsewhere as יובל, is beyond any level associated with any of the three levels to which the term ארץ can be applied. Moses' being "buried" in what we commonly call חוץ לארץ is a compliment to him thus rather than a reminder of some inadequacy on his part. In fact, once Moses' life on earth had come to an end, he joined the souls of "his" 600,000 people who also had not been buried in the Holy Land. If we find that Moses separated from his terrestrial wife Tzipporah –something used by his sister Miriam as an accusation against him in Numbers 12,1 – the reason was simply that Moses had already "used" [in the sense that one has relations with one's wife. Ed.] the spiritual light from extra-terrestrial regions as we know from Exodus 34,29 where Moses is described as emitting supernatural light from his face. Having a "wife" in those regions, it is easy to understand that Moses could no longer share life with a wife on earth. Jacob, on the other hand, had married four wives and had shared a fully terrestrial life with them, one of the reasons that his bed, מטה, was called שלימה, "complete" by our sages. This means that only upon his death did his רוח ונשמה, soul and spirit, merit entry to the seventh level i.e. בינה.

While the Sabbath with its gift of the נשמה יתירה, the additional soul which inhabits every Jew on that day, represents one sixtieth of what the Sabbath in the future will hold, the Tabernacle too is conceived of as affording us a glimpse of one sixtieth of what the World to Come will be like. This is the deeper meaning of the statement in Shabbat 10 where G–d is quoted as telling Moses that He had a wonderful gift for him and the Jewish people called Sabbath. This is the reason for Exodus 31,13. G–d announced that He was going to bestow that gift. From this Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel derived the rule that one must inform the mother of a child if one wishes to give the child some bread (ibid.). The Talmud challenges this deduction, citing Rabbi Chama who wants to prove that one does not need to inform the recipient of a gift he will receive. He points out that upon his descent from Mount Sinai Moses was unaware of G–d's gift and only covered his forehead -which by then was emitting rays of light- after he became aware that the people had become afraid to approach him (34,29 32). The Talmud does not recognise a contradiction here, saying that matters which become common knowledge need not be announced by the donor beforehand. This argument is challenged by a scholar who asks: "Is not also the Sabbath something that becomes common knowledge, and yet the prohibition of work had to be announced?" The answer given to this is that the reward for observing the Sabbath is certainly not something that becomes common knowledge without being announced. [Rashi assumes that the reward, though not spelled out in the text, was announced by Moses orally. Ed.]

The Torah is telling us that if only Adam had not sinned, his body would have been as holy as the כתנות אור, the garments of light that man was meant to wear in Gan Eden. Under the circumstances, these garments have become כתנות עור, garments of skin and flesh, something physical. As long as Adam did not need those garments, he was placed in גן עדן, to help preserve it since he was not a stranger, i.e. זר, in that environment. Once he had become forced to garb himself in garments made of materials that come out of the earth he had become a stranger in that environment, and this situation did not change until Aaron became anointed by holy anointing oil as High Priest. Compare what I have written earlier in Parshat Tetzaveh, concerning Moses performing priestly functions dressed only in a white tunic instead of in the High Priest's garments. This meant that he had never been a זר, stranger, at all; the whole house filled with light at the time he was born (Exodus 2,2, as quoted in Sotah 12). Moses' unblemished condition continued until, in the end, he himself radiated light, as we know from Exodus 34,29. This is as if he had been garbed in the כתנות אור, that we described as the state of man in his innocence in גן עדן. This is what was meant by the white tunic in which he performed the sacrificial service. It meant he did not need to do anything to rehabilitate himself in order to achieve the state of holiness necessary for a High Priest to perform sacrificial service, זרות, alienation, was a condition that did not come into existence till after the כתנות אור, garments woven out of light, had been withdrawn, to be kept in hiding until the future, the time of the Messiah, just as the original light G–d had created at the beginning of the creative process had also been "hidden" due to man's sin (Compare Tanchuma Noach 3). Moses did not have to wait for that light to re-appear.

This is what G–d showed Moses before he died, since Moses could be considered the ראש העולם "the head of the world, and the opening word of the Torah is בראשית, meaning בשביל משה רבנו שנקרא ראשית, "the world was created on account of Moses who is called ראשית." G–d commenced the creative process with the directive "let there be light," a reference to the light emitted by the forehead of Moses (Exodus 34,29). This kind of light was hidden (after Moses died). Moses is also considered the סוף העולם, the "end" of the world, i.e. when the world will finally renew itself it will draw on the qualities possessed by Moses. Such a world will be more perfect than the original world. The Zohar on Deut. 3,24: אתה החילות comments that Moses represents the beginning of this process, i.e. the first perfect human being, and the Messiah will represent its conclusion. The generations between these two find themselves surrounded by varying degrees of darkness, to compensate for which they will experience this excess of light at the time of the Messiah.

The reason the Midrash picked these two examples was that they represent the two aspects of our ascent, that of the soul and that of the body, i.e. תלמוד ומעשה, theory and practice. When he descended from Mount Sinai Moses himself encountered the experience both of wearing garments woven of light and of the skin of his face radiating light; both his body and his soul had undergone similar refinement (Exodus 34, 29). When Moses prophesied he never had to prepare himself by first negating the importance of his body since his body was on a level permitting free communication with the Divine. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish mentioned Moses in the Midrash quoted in order to show us how Moses achieved the blending of body and soul in holiness.

The patriarch Jacob, who is described in the Torah as איש תם, as opposed to אדם מועד לעולם, was the first person since Adam who did not fit that mould. He was extremely careful not to waste even a single drop of his semen so that he was able to describe Reuben, who was born to him when he was 84 or 85 years old, as ראשית אוני, the product of his first drop of semen (49,3). As a result [of not being guilty of sins committed while asleep. Ed.] he had to pay only half the damage for any sins he committed, i.e. his death was not total, he did not die as Jacob, only as Israel, as we have explained at length in פרשת וישלח. Significantly, Jacob was 130 years old when he arrived in Egypt. Both he and his descendants made up for the 130 years that Adam had emitted semen nocturnally without sleeping with his wife. The redeemer (Moses), whose skin later on radiated light like a קרן, (Exodus 34,29) was born when his mother Yocheved was 130 years old (Sotah 12 on Exodus 2,2).