Moses Rejoiced More at Aaron's Anointing Than Aaron Did

When the anointing oil poured down over Aaron's beard on the day he was consecrated as High Priest, the Midrash says Moses felt it as though it were his own beard being anointed.

This is the reading buried in Shir HaShirim Rabbah 10:1, the ancient rabbinic commentary on the Song of Songs, compiled in the fifth or sixth century CE in the Land of Israel. The text takes the verse "Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments" (Song of Songs 1:10) and reads it as a description not of a beloved woman but of the relationship between the two brothers who led Israel out of Egypt. Just as cheeks exist for speech, the rabbis say, so Moses and Aaron were created for speech, for leadership, for the long work of making God's word comprehensible to a people in slavery and then in the wilderness.

The Hebrew word translated as "ornaments," batorim, gives the rabbis a series of openings. It can mean two Torahs: the written Torah and the oral Torah, both given at Sinai and both entrusted to the community through Moses and Aaron. It can mean many Torahs, referencing the separate laws of burnt offerings, meal offerings, guilt offerings, peace offerings, the law of death in a tent (Numbers 19:14), each one a facet of the single teaching. And it can mean "two countenances," two faces shining with mutual regard, each one reflecting the other's worth.

That last reading is where the passage finds its heart. The Midrash records what God said to Moses about the nature of his relationship with Aaron: "Just as fear of Me is upon you, so too, your fear will be upon your brother." Aaron would hold Moses in reverence the way Moses held God in reverence. But then, in a move the Midrash finds remarkable, Moses refused to occupy that elevated position alone. When Moses and Aaron went to assemble the elders of Israel, Aaron spoke all the matters (Exodus 4:29-30). Moses did not use his brother as a mouthpiece. He stood shoulder to shoulder with him, treating him as an equal, celebrating Aaron's role rather than subordinating it.

The evidence runs in both directions. From where do we know that Aaron rejoiced in Moses's prominence? The verse says "He will see you and he will rejoice in his heart" (Exodus 4:14). Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai draws the consequence: the heart that rejoiced at Moses's greatness was worthy to wear the Urim and Tumim, the sacred objects placed in the breastplate of judgment that rested against Aaron's chest in the Tabernacle (Exodus 28:30). The rejoicing of Aaron's heart was rewarded with the presence of the sacred on that same heart.

And from where do we know that Moses rejoiced in Aaron's prominence? Rabbi Acha asks a question about Psalms 133:2: "It is like fine oil on the head, descending onto the beard, the beard of Aaron." Why does the verse say "the beard" twice? Aaron did not have two beards. The doubling signals something else. When Moses watched the anointing oil descend onto his brother's beard on the day of Aaron's consecration, the Midrash says Moses felt it as if it were running down his own. The second "beard of Aaron" in the verse is read as Moses's beard, present by proxy, honored in the honoring of his brother.

The teaching is quiet but difficult. Moses was the only human being in history said to have spoken with God face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10). He stood alone at Sinai. He carried the tablets. He was the one to whom the Shekhinah (שכינה), God's indwelling presence, spoke directly. He had every reason to treat Aaron as subordinate, because in almost every formal sense Aaron was subordinate. And yet the tradition insists that Moses did the opposite: he equated his shoulder to Aaron's shoulder, stood beside him rather than above him, felt his brother's honor as his own.

The Shir HaShirim Rabbah commentary uses the Song of Songs as a lens for reading the entire relationship between God and Israel, and within that reading, the relationship between Moses and Aaron becomes a model for how human beings can hold power without being distorted by it. The two brothers were created for speech, the rabbis say, and the speech they were created for was not competitive. Their voices were the Written and the Oral Torah together, the law and its interpretation, inseparable, neither one subsumable into the other.

The oil ran down Aaron's beard. Moses felt it as his own. That, the Midrash says, is what it looks like when someone with extraordinary power refuses to mistake their own greatness for the only greatness in the room.