Halakhah su Esodo 34:29

And now I shall make known to you the subject of the upper light, which I mentioned above, and that’s how I will end this Gate. Know that the upper light I mentioned above is called “day” [yom] in the story of creation, and about it the prophet said, “there shall be one day – only the Lord knows when – of neither day nor night, and there will be light at evening time.”¹⁶⁷Zech 14:7 (JSB). The explanation of this verse: “There will be [ve-hayah] one day”. The word Ve-HaYa”H consists of the same letters of God’s proper name, and so it is written “YHVH is my light and my help, whom shall I fear? YHVH, etc.”¹⁶⁸Ps 27:1. This is YHVH is “light.” “One day of light – only the Lord knows” – He alone knows where it is. As they taught in a midrash, “He hid it for Himself, He made it separate for Himself.”¹⁶⁹Ber. R. 3:7. “Neither day nor night” – that is to say, a time will come when this day shall serve for the righteous, and time won’t consist of day and night like it works now with light and darkness, but rather, “there will be light at evening time” – a great light. And “evening” [‘erev] is the secret of “the sixth aleph,” which is the evening of Shabbat, as in “yom ha-shishi” – “the sixth day.” And this is the light that Moses our Rabbi (peace upon him) earned in “the cleft of the rock,”¹⁷⁰Ex 33:22.”the reflecting mirror”¹⁷¹B. Yebamot 49b. out of which he was able to prophesy, and thus earned the “radiation from the skin of his face”¹⁷²Ex 34:29. that was as bright as “the face of the sun.”¹⁷³B. Baba Batra 75a. And in an interpretation they said, “a variety of the upper light is the globe of the sun,”¹⁷⁴Ber. R. 17:7 (as translated by Jastrow). because the light of this level is the level of Moses’ prophecy, and the globe of the sun, which is a variety of this, is the “radiation from the skin of his face.” And this is what is written, “rays [karnayyim] given off from every side, and therein His glory is enveloped,”¹⁷⁵Hab 3:4. that is, the “radiation from the skin of his face.” This came directly from the hand of the Holy One Blessed be He to Moses, and this radiation is the fruit of what was his in this world, distinct from the eternal radiance that would be his in the world to come, and that is the level of the upper light. If so, then the word “karnayyim” – “rays” -includes both the fruit and the eternal radiance.¹⁷⁶Karnayyim is the dual form of keren, which can mean either “ray”, or more ordinarily, “horn.” From this ambiguity comes the misinterpretation of Ex 34:29 that led artists such as Michelangelo to represent Moses with horns coming out of his forehead. R. Bahya is playing upon the dual form of keren, karnayyim, which is the normal plural form for body parts, like horns, which come in pairs. And all this was because of the tablets – luhot – that he was holding. And so this is hinted at in the word “LU’a”H,” which is an acronym of the words in Habakkuk 3:4: karnayyim mi-yado Lo Ve-sham Hevyon ‘uzo. And they said in a midrash, ¹⁷⁷M. Tanhuma Ki Tisa 37. “‘[They saw] the rays of the skin of his face,’¹⁷⁸Ex 34:30. all the majesty that Moses got was but temporary fruit, a gift he earned, but the eternal radiance would be his in the world to come, as it is said, ‘rays [karnayyim] from His hand to him.'”¹⁷⁹Hab 3:4, reading mi-yado midrashically as “from His [God’s] hand,” i.e., two kinds of “rays” one in this world, one in the world to come, from God’s hand to Moses. And they went on in another midrash,¹⁸⁰M. Tanhuma Ki Tisa 37. “‘I will put you in a cleft of a rock’ – from ‘the cleft of the rock’ Moses earned the radiation from the skin of his face, and thus it says, ‘rays from His hand to him, there from a secret place [hevyon] His glory.'”¹⁸¹Hab 3:4.