What Moses Called Out on Sinai in Pseudo-Jonathan

The Hebrew of Exodus describes Moses's ascents to Mount Sinai with a few quiet verbs. He went up. He stood. He came down with shining face. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus, the expansive Aramaic Targum preserving older traditions in a later redacted form, fills the silences in.

The Targum specifies what was visible on the summit, what Moses said while standing there, and what the Israelites could not endure looking at when he came down. Three passages from the Targum reconstruct the prophet's mountain conversation in unusually concrete language.

The Summit That Was Visited

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 19:20 describes the moment of the revelation. The Hebrew says the Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. The Aramaic is barely different in surface meaning. The change is in the verb.

The Hebrew uses a verb of descent. The Aramaic uses a verb of revelation. And the Lord revealed Himself on Mount Sinai. The choice is deliberate. The Holy One does not, in the Targum's reading, move through physical space. He becomes visible in a specific place. The mountain summit is the location of the unveiling, not the destination of a descent.

The teaching has theological consequence. The Targum's translator wants the reader to avoid the picture of a deity stepping down from a higher altitude. The Holy One was already present everywhere. What happened on Sinai was the unveiling of a presence that had not previously been accessible to human perception. Moses ascends. He is called. The unveiling above him meets him at the summit.

The Name Moses Called On in the Cloud

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 34:5 records what Moses did once he was standing in the cloud. The Hebrew says and the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood there with him, and he called on the name of the Lord. The Aramaic clarifies the cloud and the calling.

The Lord revealed Himself in the cloud of the glory of His Shekinah, and Moses stood with Him there; and Moses called on the Name of the Word of the Lord. The Targum specifies what Moses called on. Not the name of the Holy One directly. The name of the Memra, the Word, the mediating presence through which the divine name becomes audible.

The teaching is precise. Moses, standing in the cloud, did not address the Holy One in His unmediated essence. He addressed the Memra. The Aramaic translator is preserving a strict transcendent boundary even at the highest moment of prophetic intimacy. Even Moses, even on Sinai, even with the cloud of the Shekinah around him, called on the Word, not on the One who spoke through the Word.

The Face the Israelites Could Not Look At

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 34:35 describes the descent. The Hebrew says the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses's face shone, and Moses put the veil back over his face until he went in again to speak with the Lord. The Aramaic adds a specific descriptor.

The sons of Israel saw the countenance of Moses, that the glory of the form of Moses's face was shining. The Targum names the shining as glory of the form. The Aramaic word for form, parsofa, is the same word the later Kabbalistic tradition uses for the divine configurations called partzufim. The light shining from Moses's face was not generic radiance. It was the imprint of a specific configuration he had been in proximity to.

The teaching is sober. Moses had been speaking with the Memra in the cloud. The form of the Memra had imprinted itself on his face. The Israelites, unable to look at the imprint, required him to wear the veil. The veil was a protection. The face beneath it carried a glow that the rest of the camp had not been prepared to receive.

What the Aramaic Was Preserving

Stack the three passages and the Targum's reading of the Sinai ascents becomes legible. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the transcendent boundary while making the prophetic encounter physically specific.

The Holy One reveals Himself on the summit; He does not descend through space. Moses calls on the Memra in the cloud; he does not address the unmediated essence. The shining of Moses's face is the imprint of a specific divine configuration; the veil is the protection the unprepared eye required. The Aramaic translator is preserving, at every step, a careful asymmetry between the Holy One who unveils and the prophet who must mediate.