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Moses Called on the Memra at the Summit and Came Down Glowing

The Targum trades God's descent for a revelation, Moses calls on the Memra by name, and Israel cannot bear to look at his shining face.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Mountain That Was Visited, Not Descended Upon
  2. Moses Addressing the Memra
  3. The Face That Carried the Light Out
  4. The Veil He Put On Himself

The Mountain That Was Visited, Not Descended Upon

The Hebrew of Exodus says the Lord came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain. The Aramaic changes one word. The Lord revealed Himself on Mount Sinai. Not came down. Revealed Himself. The Holy One does not, in the Targum's understanding, move through physical space the way a person moves. He becomes visible in a specific place. The mountain summit was the location of the unveiling, not the destination of a physical passage from a place above to a place below.

The shift is not cosmetic. It carries the Targum's consistent theology of divine movement: when the Torah says God descended, the Aramaic translator steps in to protect the idea of an omnipresent God from being misread as one who travels. The Shekhinah, the divine indwelling Presence, appeared in a form the people could witness. The summit was where that appearance became possible for human eyes to tolerate.

Moses Addressing the Memra

On the second ascent, when Moses carried the new tablets up the mountain, the Targum records a moment of liturgical reversal. In the earlier Sinai revelation, God had called Moses. This time, Moses called on God. The prophet initiated the encounter. He stood in the cloud of the glory of the Shekhinah and called on the Name of the Memra, the Word of the Lord.

Qera b'shuma di-Memra. He called on the Name of the Word. The Memra is the Targum's preferred agent of divine action, the channel through which heaven acts in the world without compromising divine transcendence. When the Torah says God acted, the Targum often says the Memra acted. Moses, at Sinai's summit with the replacement tablets, invoked this agency by name. He did not wait for God to speak first. He began the liturgy that would become the foundation of Jewish prayer.

The Face That Carried the Light Out

Every time Moses came out of the Tent of Meeting, the Targum records, the sons of Israel saw the countenance of Moses, that the glory of the form of his face was shining. The light did not stay behind on the mountain or inside the Tent. It traveled out on his skin, a residue of forty days standing inside a brightness no other living person had endured that long. The people who had waited in the camp lifted their eyes toward him and could not hold the sight. The glory had soaked into the face of a man and come walking back among them.

He had spent forty days inside that light. The Israelites had not. Their eyes had grown used to the ordinary daylight of the wilderness, to firelight, to the dimness of tents. The face that returned from the cloud of the Shekhinah carried more than their eyes had been trained to receive. He understood what too much light does to eyes that had not been prepared for it, because he was the one carrying it.

The Veil He Put On Himself

Then Moses replaced the veil. He did it on his own initiative, each time, every time he stepped outside. He was not told to cover himself. The Targum is careful about this. The covering was his own decision, not a command from above.

The veil was his gift to them, a piece of deliberate mercy from a man who knew exactly what he was carrying and exactly how much of it others could bear. He would remove the veil when he went back in to speak with the Memra. He would replace it every time he came back out. Back and forth, veil lifted in the presence of heaven and lowered in the presence of the people, every conversation with the Word followed by a careful dimming of its residue for those waiting outside. The same hands that had held the new tablets up the mountain now drew a cloth across his own face so the camp could go on looking at him.

Targum Pseudo JonathanExodusMosesSinaiMemraShekinah
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 19:20Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

The mountain trembled because God Himself had come down upon it. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan renders the moment with startling directness: the Lord revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, upon the very summit of the mountain, and from that peak He called to Moses. And Moses went up (Exodus 19:20).

Notice what the Aramaic Targum does here. The Hebrew simply says the Lord descended. The Targumist insists the Lord revealed Himself, because God does not physically move from place to place. What descends on Sinai is the Shekinah, the indwelling Presence, appearing in a form the people can bear to witness without being undone.

Where does the Presence settle? Not halfway up the mountain. Not on the slopes. Upon the summit. The highest place, the place closest to heaven, the place no Israelite is permitted to touch. There God waits, and from that unreachable height a voice goes out calling the name of one man.

Moses climbs alone. Every step upward is a step further from the camp and closer to the fire. The Targum leaves the ascent unadorned, no drama, no delay. Moses went up. When God calls, a prophet answers with his feet.

The takeaway: sanctity does not come down to us where we are comfortable. It waits at the summit, and the work of a holy life is the climb.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 34:5Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

When Moses reached the summit with the new tablets, the meeting was unlike the first Sinai revelation. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, describes what happened.

"The Lord revealed Himself in the cloud of the glory of His Shekhinah, and Moses stood with Him there; and Moses called on the Name of the Memra, the Word of the Lord" (Exodus 34:5).

Notice the reversal. In the earlier chapters, God had called Moses. This time, Moses calls on God. The prophet initiates the invocation. He pronounces the Name. He begins the liturgy that will become the heart of Jewish prayer.

The Aramaic qera b'shuma di-Memra, "called on the Name of the Word," carries forward a theological move central to the Targum. God is Memra, the divine Word, the Agency by which Heaven acts in the world. Moses does not call on an abstraction. He calls on the active, speaking Presence, the same Word that has been following him through the whole Sinai drama.

And the cloud that descended was not a show of force. It was the Shekhinah of glory, present but veiled, granting the audience for what was about to be revealed - the Thirteen Attributes, the liturgical foundation of every Selichot service for the next three thousand years.

Takeaway: Prayer at its deepest is not waiting for God to call us. It is learning to call on the Name, to enter the cloud, to begin the conversation ourselves.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 34:35Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

After every encounter in the Tent of Meeting, Moses came out with his face alight. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 34:35) says plainly: the sons of Israel saw the countenance of Mosheh, that the glory of the form of Mosheh's face was shining. And then Moses replaced the veil.

The Targum's verb sequence matters: saw, then replaced. The people did not beg Moses to cover himself. He did it on his own initiative, again and again, every time he stepped outside the tent. The rabbis understood this as an act of pedagogical mercy. Moses knew what too much light does to eyes that have not been prepared for it. He had lived for forty days inside that light; the Israelites had not. The veil was his gift to them.

There is a second layer in the Targum's wording, the glory of the form of Mosheh's face was shining. Not Moses was shining, but the form of his face was shining. The light was not Moses himself. It was something that had settled upon him, a loaner from the Shekhinah. The rabbis later used this to argue that holiness is never an intrinsic human property; it is borrowed, and the one who carries it most purely is the one who never mistakes it for their own.

Tradition says Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). The veil is proof. A less humble prophet would have walked through camp radiant every day, collecting awe. Moses covered up.

The takeaway: the people who carry the most light are usually the first to dim it for others. Humility and holiness in Judaism are the same gesture, the hand that draws the veil back over the shining face.

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