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Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish Theology

Benjamin D. Sommer

The Journal of Religion, Vol. 79, No. 3. (Jul., 1999), pp. 422-451.

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Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible

and in Jewish Theology*

Benjamin

D

ommer /

Northwestern

Uniuersity

T o t h e m e m o r y o f m y R a b b i a n d t e a c h e r , D a n i e l L ei fe r,

d i r e c t o r o f t h e H i ll e l F o u n d a t i o n a t t h e U n i ve r si ty o f C h i c a go :

" M y t e a c h e r M y t e a c h e r H i s p r a y e rs a r e m o r e v a l u a b le t o

I sr a el t h a n c h a r i o t r y a n d h o r se m e n ." ( T a r g u m J o n a t h a n t o

2

K in g s

2: 12)

Is there a place for the Bible, and for modern biblical scholarship, in

contemporary Jewish theology? In the eyes of many Jewish thinkers, the

tasks of the biblical critic are purely excavative and thus irrelevant to con-

structive projects. The philologist can ascertain the meanings of words;

the comparativist can relate biblical beliefs and practices to those of other

ancient Near Eastern cultures; the source critic and the tradition histo-

rian can recover older versions of the texts that the Israelites knew. But

those are taken to be purely academic pursuits, no more connected to

the tasks of the modern thinker and the concerns of the religious Jew

than artifacts dug up by an archaeologist.'

Such an attitude (however implicit or unconscious i t may be), reads not

*

I have presented these ideas to several academic, rabbinic, and lay audiences, and I

received insightful feedback in all these settings. T he first such presen tation occu rred a t a

tiqqun lei1 Sha~lu 'ot

at the University of Chicago Hillel Foundat ion, an d

I

am grateful for the

invitation from Rabbi Daniel Leifer 5.r for the invitation to teach an d lea rn there. My warm

thank s go to friends an d colleagues who comm ented on drafts of this article: Shau l Magid,

M anfred Vogel, Michael Fishbane, M ichael Balinsky, David Ca rr, Ju di th Alexander, Bar uch

Schwartz, Steven Weitzm an, Suz anne Griffeel, David Ro senberg , Steven Mason, a nd Ir a You-

dawn.

'

T he problem is not uni que to Jewish theology. See the rem arks, e.g., of W'erner

G.

Jean-

ro nd , "C riteria for New Biblical Theologies,"

Journal of Religzon

("Th e Bible and Christian

Theology," ed . John J . Collins) 76, no. 2 (1996) : 233-49, esp. 233, an d the ten or of that

entire issue.

O 1999 by T h e University of Chicago. All rights re sew ed.

0022-418919917903-0004$02.00



Revelation at Sinai

only the biblical critic out of the ongoing formulation of Jewish thought,

but-more troublingly-the first Jews as well. If shaqla' we-tarya', "give-

and-take," provide the proper model for Jewish theologizing, then the

participants seated at the table must include not only the postmodernist,

the neo-Kantian, the mystic, and the tanna. Room must be made for the

ancient Israelites as well. Moreover, those Israelites must not be limited

to the late figures who redacted older texts into the biblical books as we

know them. They must also include the authors whose writings are em-

bedded within the final redaction of the canon, as well as the oral tradents

who stand behind those authors." theologically oriented Jewish reader

of scripture must find room for R-that is, for the editors who produced

the Torah by combining (and thus transforming) older documents. But

such a reader must also create space for those who fashioned the older

documents-for

J and

D

and

P

and others whose voices are mere echoes

in the first written texts of the Jewish people. If one does so, one will

find surprising connections and recognize long lost soul mates. The most

contemporary discussion on Jewish theology may come into focus pre-

cisely when those pursuing

i t

look to the most distant interlocutors.

A

dialogue of the sort I am describing becomes possible when we insist,

in an unfashionably historicist manner, that modern biblical scholarship

allows one to hear forgotten voices of Jewish creativity and that therefore

biblical critics must be placed alongside the familiar interpreters of the

Miqra'ot Gedolot (a compendium of medieval rabbinic commentaries)

and the classical midrashic collections. This essay, in attempting to give

an example of such a dialogue, is essentially anthological: I will draw on

Moshe Greenberg and also Maimonides, Aryeh Toeg, and the Talmud.

In so doing, I hope to show those familiar with any one type of literature

on which I rely that the others are just as interesting.

The topic I utilize for this endeavor is the most basic one possible for

both the biblicist and the theologian: why is scripture ~ a c r e d ? ~o many a

modern Jew, the Tanakh is at once a holy book and an embarrassing one.

It is for this reason that the model of biblical theology associated with canon criticism

holds little pertinence for a modern Jewish attempt to approach scripture theologically:

the re is no justification for a m ode rn Jewish thinke r to privilege the voice of the re dactor

or can onizer over that of earlier au tho rs. See fur the r on this point my essay "T he Scroll of

Isaiah a s Jewish Sc riptu re, or, Why Jews D on't Read Books," in Society ofBiblical Literature

1996

Seminar Papers

(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), pp.

225-43.

Some Christian thinkers

express similar qualms about the canon criticism and its theological application; see, e.g.,

James Barr,

Ho lj Scripture: Can on, Authority, Criticism

(Phila delphia : W estminster,

1983),

esp. p p. 49-74.

To be sure, biblical authors did not raise this issue explicitly. But they did address the

questio n, How did or does God reveal Himself to Israel? T he answ ers to this second ques-

tion can provide guidance as we confront our modern perplexity regarding the sacrality of

scr ip ture. Th us a d ialogue amon g modern s an d ancients regarding th is mo dern ques tion

is not entirely an ahistorical fantasy.



T h e Journal of Religion

However much one reveres it, one is aware of its human side-not only

because of its patent multiple authorship and its striking resemblances

with other ancient Near Eastern texts, but because of those of its passages

that cannot be reconciled with a God who is merciful or just: its brutality,

its commandments to kill innocents, its sexism. How, then, can a contem-

porary Jewish theology come to terms at once with obedience to the tradi-

tion based on this text and the need to construct correctives to it? How

can a theology express both love of Torah and readiness to study it criti-

cally and with an open mind?

One influential attempt to answer these questions is found in a stream

of twentieth-century Jewish thought associated especially with Franz Ro-

senzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel. These thinkers have suggested

that all of Jewish tradition is a response to the act of revelation, which did

not itself convey specific content. Thus Heschel states that the Bible is a

midrash on the event of revelation. According to Rosenzweig, "The pri-

mary content of revelation is revelation itself. 'He came down' [on Si-

nail-this already concludes the revelation; 'He spoke' is the beginning

of interpretati~n."~or thinkers such as these, the Bible remains holy as

a response to God's self-manifestation, but its wording is the product of

human beings. Is this view so radical that it goes beyond the bounds of

authentically Jewish discourse on the sacred? I hope to show that it does

not, for the model of revelation this line of thinking entails has very deep

roots. In order to trace them, let us begin our exegetical dialogue by

returning to the moment of revelation itself, to Sinai5

For Heschel's view, see Abraham J osh ua Heschel, God in Search o fM an (New York: Jewish

Publication Society, 1956), p. 185; cf. p. 274, an d see in g eneral pt. 2, chaps. 19-20, an d

esp. chap. 27. For Rosenzweig, see Franz Rosenzweig,

OnJewish Learning,

ed. Nahum Glat-

zer (New York: Schocken, 1 955),p. 118. See Franz Rosenzweig, The Star oftledemption, trans.

William H allo (New York: Holt, R inehart & Winston, 1970), pp . 176-78. Glatzer expressed

a kindred view of revelation, as Rosenzweig notes in On Jewish Learning, p. 119. A similar,

but not identical, idea appe ars in the work of Martin Buber, who understa nds revelation as

involving divine presence (bu t not divine c om m and ); see, e.g., his and Thou, trans. Walter

Kaufm ann (Edingburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1970), p. 158, The Eclipse of God (New York: Har per ,

1952), p. 173, an d his letters to Rosenzweig, fou nd in On Jewish Learning, pp . 11 1-17. I

explain below why his approach is less relevant to my project here.

Som e comments o n the natur e an d affiliations of this project a re w arranted. T his essay

does not att em pt to sketch out a Jewish approa ch to biblical theology. I understand biblical

theologians to concern themselves with either (1) synthetic descriptions of biblical teach-

ings concerning God and God's relation to the world and the community of believers or

(2) constru ctions of teachings about these issues on the basis of biblical texts. Neithe r en -

deavo r relates to Jewish theological conce rns (cf. Jon Levenson, "Why Jews Are N ot I n-

terested in Biblical Theology," in his The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Histoiical Criti-

cism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies [Louisville, Ky.: WestminsteriJohn Knox, 19931,

pp . 33-61). T h e form er, descriptive, endeavor is not strictly speak ing theological at all; it is,

in theory, an exercise in the history of Israelite religion. In practice, however, descriptive

biblical theologians have shown themselves to be at least as influenced by systematic or



Revelation a t Sinai

What, exactly, did the Israelite nation hear and see at Sinai? This is no

merely academic query. The event that transpired at Mount Sinai some

three months after the Exodus represents the central event of Jewish his-

tory. More than the redemption from slavery, more than the gift of the

Land of Israel, more than the selection ofAbraham and Sarah, the expe-

rience at Sinai created the intermingling of religion and ethnicity that we

now call Judaism. The Jewish liturgy says repeatedly: God gave Torah to

the Jewish people. The Musdom tractate of the Mishna, Pirkei Avot, be-

gins: Moses received Torah at Sinai and passed it on, which is to say, made

i t

a tradition. But what do these crucial verbs-God gave, Israel received-

mean? The authority of Jewish law and the sacred status of the Bible rest

on these verbs, and thus a thorough inquiry into their sense is warranted.

The need for this inquiry is especially urgent in our day. For most modern

Jews, including many traditionally oriented or halachically practicing

ones, the stenographic theory of revelation (God spoke, Moses took dicta-

tion word-for-word, and the Five Books record God's utterances exactly)

does not remain compelling. Theologically, this theory is possible, but it

limits the notion of revelation severely: surely the divine can make itself

known in other forms and in more complex ways. Further, the Pentateuch

displays consistent differences of language, style, and outlook along with

a lack of internal cohesion, in light of which it is clear that the Five Books

crystallized from a process of development that spanned many genera-

tions. What, then, makes them holy? If the words recorded as reflecting

the theophany at Sinai are, at least in part, human words, then wherein

dogmatic theology as by biblical texts (see Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, "Tanakh Theology:

T h e Religion of the Old Testam ent an d the Place of Jewish Biblical Theology," in Ancient

Israelite Religzon: Essays in Ho nor of Frank Moore Cross, e d . P. D. Hanson , P. D. Miller, and

S.

D.

McB ride [Philad elphia: Fortress, 19871, pp. 617-44, esp. 623-26, and cf. the critiqu e of

Walther Eichrodt and Ge rhard von R ad in Levenson, pp . 16-27). T hu s a truly descriptive

biblical theology, Jewish or otherw ise, does not exist, perha ps because it cann ot exist; any

genuinely descriptive project belongs to the field of intellectual history and not to theology.

T h e latte r constructive e ndea vor c annot b e a Jewish on e since any sort of Jewish theology

must prominently include postbiblical traditions. In light of all this, it seems to me that

the re can be n o Jewish biblical theology. W hat can exist is a m od ern Jewish theology that

returns to scriptural documents and voices, utilizing them alongside other authoritative

texts. Th is sort of undertakin g, w hich m ight be t erm ed a biblically oriente d Jewish theology

rath er tha n Jewish biblical theology, would focus on biblical texts in ways that a re new an d

to an e xtent tha t is new.

In

this essay

I

sketch out th e me tho d of such a theology by bringing

biblical texts to bear on modern Jewish theological concerns and, moreover, by showing

that these con cerns are not solely moder n. Such a method need not be limited to a Jewish

theology; for a C hristian an alog (which, ironically, is far mo re g erm an e to Jewish tho ug ht

th an th e allegedly objective work of descriptive biblical theologian s), see Jam es Barr, Biblical

Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarend on,

1993) .



The Journal of Religion

lies the sacrality of Torah (whether in the sense of the text of the Penta-

teuch or the whole tradition of Jewish learning)?Jewish law rests its claim

to authority on its divinely revealed status. But if the specific laws found

in the Pentateuch and in later Jewish tradition were written by the Jewish

people themselves, then can they be described as revealed at all? If these

laws are to constitute a binding system, this issue must be addressed.

These questions have become central in recent Jewish thought.=Yet the

debate regarding what precisely was heard and seen at Sinai is not an

exclusively modern one. The very questions that moderns must ask were

already present in the earliest strata of Jewish tradition, not only in texts

that interpret the Bible but in the biblical accounts themselves. Thus the

construction of a contemporary Jewish theology of revelation can start,

as it must start, with older Jewish texts-indeed, with the oldest.

Let me turn, then, to the account of revelation in Exodus 19, focusing

on the question, what did Israel experience? What sights and sounds en-

tered the escaped slaves' ears (and those of later Jews as well, according

to the tradition that all the generations of Israel were present at Sinai)?

The chapter defies a coherent sequential reading. More than any other

passage in the Pentateuch, it is full of ambiguities, gaps, strange repeti-

tions, and apparent contradictions, as many scholars (one thinks espe-

cially of Toeg, Greenberg, and Brevard Childs) have shown. These oddi-

ties multiply when one reads the subsequent two narratives, which also

describe theophany at Sinai: Exod. 20:15-1g7 and Exodus 24.8 For ex-

T o r a sense of the centrality of th es e issues, see especially the first question pose d to thirty -

eight Jewish thinkers by the editors of C o m m en t a ~ n The Condition of Jewish Belief (L o n d o n :

Collier-Macmillan, 1 966), originally published in

Commentary,

vol. 42, no. 2 (August 1966).

T he re a re several Masoretic systems for versification of Exodus 20 a nd Deu terono my 5.

resulting from the different cantillation systems used for the Ten Commandments.

As

a

result, Masoretic Bibles variously number the first verse after the Ten Commandments in

Exodus as verse 14, 15, or 18. In this article, I will number the first verse after the Ten

Co mm andm ents in Exodus as 20:15 and in Deuteronom y as 5:19; readers who look up

verses

I

cite from Exodus 20 or Deuteronom y 5 may need to add three o r subtract one to

locate the correct verse, depe ndi ng o n which Bible they have handy. ( O n this complex issue,

see the convincing study of Mordechai Breuer, "Dividing the Decalogue into Verses and

Commandments," in

The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition,

ed. Ben-Zion Segal,

trans. G ershon Levi Uerusalem: M agnes, 19901, pp. 291-330.)

'Se e esp. Aryeh Toeg, Lawgizlzng at Sinai (Jerusale m: Magnes, 1977), pp. 13-14 (in He -

brew ); Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus (Philad elphia: Westminster, 1974) , p. 244; Moshe

Greenberg, "The Decalogue Tradition Critically Examined," in Segal, ed., pp. 83-88.

An

especially clear description of the od dities produced by att em ptin g to read Exodus 19-24

as a continuous narrative appe ars in Baruch Schwartz, "Wh at Really Happ ened at M ount

Sinai? Four Biblical Answers to O ne Question," Bible Review 12, no.

5

(Octo ber 1997 ): 20-

46, esp. 23-25. T h e various textual comp onents of these chapters approach crucial narra -

tive an d th em atic issues very differently, as Bar uch Schw artz shows in " T h e Priestly Account

of the The oph an y an d Lawgiving at Sinai," in

Texts, Temples, and Traditions:A Tribute to Mena-

hem Haran, ed . Michael Fox et al. (Winona L ake, In d. : Eisenbrau ns, 1996), pp. 103-34,

esp. pp. 122-30. A recent review of literature, followed by a detailed treatment of source



Revelation at Sinai

ample, these texts present a bewildering aggregate of verses describing

Moses' ascents and descents on the mountain. Moses seems not to be lo-

cated at the right place when the Ten Commandments are given: God tells

him to descend the mountain and then reascend with Aaron (Exod. 19:24),

whereupon he descends (19:25); but before he reascends the theophany

occurs (20:1).9 Similarly, we may ask: where is God located before and

during the theophany? According to Exod. 19:3, God is on the mountain

several days before the theophany itself, but according to 19: 11, God de-

scends to the mountain immediately prior to the theophany (in agree-

ment with 19: 18); n 19:20

YHWH

comes down to the summit again. (Other

biblical texts, incidentally, describe God as speaking from heaven, not from

the mountain; see Exod. 20: 19, Deut. 4:26, and possibly Exod. 24: 10. The

tension among these verses is reflected in Neh. 9:13: "You came down

on Mount Sinai and spoke to them from heaven.")l0 Moses himself tells

God in Exod. 19:23 that God's instructions in the immediately preceding

verses make little sense in light of his earlier instruction in 19:12; God

never responds to Moses' query. These oddities can be resolved, after a

fashion, through harmonistic exegesis, but their presence already inti-

mates either that the extraordinary event chapter 19 describes was wit-

nessed through a fog or that the narrative of that event could not be

articulated in human words. As Greenberg has noted, one senses that the

text combines many different recollections of this essentially unreport-

able event."

Nevertheless, regarding the aural and visual experience, these verses

from Exodus 19 seem fairly clear. The theophany was accompanied by,

or consisted of, loud noises and radiant sights: we read of smoke, fire, the

mountain shaking, a loud horn. Similar language appears in other bibli-

cal descriptions of Y H W H ' S appearance, especially those that make specific

connections to Sinai. Thus, the verses Judg. 5:4-5 also associate an earth-

quake with God's appearance at that mountain (cf. Ps. 68:8-11 and pos-

sibly Deut. 33:2, 4). Many other texts associate YHLVH'S theophany with

critical and redactional issues, appears in Erhard Blum, Stud ien ru r Komposition des Pentateuch

(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), esp. pp . 45-47.

Moshe (Umberto) Cassuto argues that it went without saying that Moses obeyed God's

directive, and thus the text does not bother to mention his reascent specifically ( A Commen-

tary on the Book ofExodus

[Jerusalem: Magnes, 19521, p. 162 [in Hebrew]). This is unlikely

given the detailed descriptions of ascents and descents in the rest of the chapter. Further,

it is clear that Moses is with the people, not on the mountain, as the theophany begins;

see Deut. 5:18 and one possible reading of Exod. 20: 16.

' All translations are my own unless specifically noted.

See Moshe Greenberg, "Exodus, Book of," in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter,

1971), 6:1056, 1060; also see Jacob Licht, "The Revelation of God's Presence a t Sinai,"

in Studies zn the Bible and Ancien t Near East Presented to Samuel Loewenstamm , ed. Y. Avishur and

J. Blau (Jerusalem: Rubenstein, 1978), 1:251-67, esp. 1:252-54 (in Hebrew).

* * :--




earthquakes and apparently lightning; take, for example, Hab. 3:3-6,

Psalm 18, and Psalm 29.

As

many scholars have noticed, this sort of por-

trayal of divine appearance is not unique to

YHWH

or to the Bible; the

theophanies of certain ancient Near Eastern deities are described in sim-

ilar terms in Canaanite and Akkadian literature." In particular, the Ca-

naanites praised Baal using remarkably similar terminology. This back-

ground will become relevant as we consider the development of the

tradition of

YHLVH'S

revelation.

In spite of the somewhat stereotypical portrayal of the theophany in

Exodus 19, several ambiguities regarding the sounds experienced by the

Israelites stand out, especially in regard to the Hebrew word

qol,

which

appears several times in the chapter. The new Jewish Publication Society

(NJPS) version is justified in rendering 19: 19 as "The blare of the horn

grew louder and louder.

As

Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder."

The translations "blare" and "thunder" are fitting for the Hebrew

qol,

particularly in light of the other Hebrew and Canaanite texts that associ-

ate lightning and storms with the theophany. Nonetheless, the old Jewish

Publication Society's (OJPS) rendering (which is based on the King James

Version [KJV]) is also legitimate: "And when the voice of the horn waxed

louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him by a voice." Not

only does "voice" represent a typical use of the noun

qol,

but the context

at the end of our verse is one of speaking and answering-activities that

are normally associated with a voice. The difference between the transla-

tions is significant. Did God speak to Moses in a human voice or in a loud

noise? The revelation's nature and its very content differ depending on

which understanding we adopt. In light of KJV and OJPS, the Israelites

heard specific information conveyed by God; in light of NJPS, what oc-

curred at Sinai was an overwhelming experience, but not necessarily one

in which they acquired distinct teachings from God. The stenographic

theory of revelation grows out of the former translation; certain modern

understandings may align themselves with the latter.

A related question concerns the sequence of events and the extent to

which the nation actually heard the revelation. This question emerges

when we read the next narrative passage, Exod. 20:15-19 (which is sep-

arated from Exodus 19 by the text of the Ten Commandments). The

l 2 See, e.g., the comprehensive discussion of Frank Moore Cross,

Canaanite Myth and He-

brew Epic: Essays in

the Histo 9 oft he Religzon ofIsrael

(Cam bridge , Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1973), pp . 147-77 (emphasizing the C anaan ite backgrou nd of these motifs); Samuel

Loewenstamm, "Th e Trembling of Nature d urin g the Theophany," in

Comparative Stwlies

zn Bzblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures

(Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1980), pp . 172-89

(stressing the Mesopotam ian parallels); Jorg Jerem ias,

Theophunie: Die Geschichte einer alttesta-

mentlichen Gattung,

2d ed . (Neukirchen: N eukirchener, 1977), pp . 73-90, 174 (stressing

both) .



Revelation at Sinai

people, frightened by what they witness, ask Moses to approach God so

that they do not have to continue experiencing the awesome and awful

revelation; Moses calms the people and agrees to serve as intermediary.

In this brief passage we again find imagery known from other Israelite

and ancient Near Eastern texts describing theophany: smoke, lightning,

and thunder (again the Hebrew reads qolot, but here its proximity to the

word lappidim makes clear that we are talking about the noise that accom-

panies bright flashes of light). What is not clear is when this conversation

between Moses and the people took place. Initially, we may assume that

the people spoke to Moses after the giving of the Ten Commandments

since the verses in question follow them. In that case, the people heard

the famous text found in Exod. 20:2-14 in its entirety; and thus they

seem to have heard not just loud noises but a humanlike voice emanating

from the divine. Hearing this voice (or the noises that accompanied it)

was an ordeal. When it ended, the nation asked to be spared any more

direct revelations, pleading that Moses notify them of subsequent com-

munications from the divine. Moses approves this plan, and consequently

he is alone when he goes into the presence of God. On doing so he re-

ceives additional laws, presumably those found in Exod. 20:20-23:33.

But one can read the order of events in Exodus 19-20 differently. It is

possible that the discussion described in Exod. 20: 15-19 took place dur-

ing the revelation rather than after it. In that case, the people were

quickly seized by terror, and they asked Moses to intervene even as God

proclaimed the Ten Commandments. This reading is suggested by the

initial verb in 20: 15, which is not a past tense, as most translations imply

(thus NJPS: "the people witnessed"), but a participle indicating ongoing

action ("the people were ~it ne ss in g" ). '~he absence in 20: 15 of the typi-

cal past tense of biblical narrative (namely, the waw-consecutive) is un-

usual, and the syntax here (waw

+

noun

+

participle) can indicate that

the event reported was simultaneous with a previously narrated occur-

rence.I4 Even though the conversation between Moses and the people

took place during the giving of the Ten Commandments, the narrative

avoids interrupting the text of the commandments and thus does not

begin again until Exod. 20:

15.15According to this understanding of the

S See Samuel R. Driver,

The Book of Exodus

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

191 I) , p. 201; and Cassuto, pp. 174-75. Neither Driver nor Cassuto fully follow the logic of

this grammatical observation, which implies that the people did not hear the whole of the

Ten Commandments. Childs, p. 371, also notes the import of the participle: "The people's

reaction . . . did not first emerge after the giving of the Decalogue, but runs parallel with

the whole theophanp"

l 4 See, e.g.,

I?

Jouon and T. Muraoka, Gramm ar ofBiblical Hebrew (Rome: Pontifical Bibli-

cal Institute, 1991), sec. 121, subsec. f:, sec. 167, subsec. h.

I This possibility was recognized already by classical commentators: see Hizzequni's com-

mentary to Exod. 20:15; and Midrash Leqah Tov to Exod. 20:2.




narrative sequence in Exodus 19-20, the nation heard only part (which

part?) of the Ten Commandments themselves; Moses, on approaching

"the thick cloud where God was" (20:18), was vouchsafed the text of the

remainder. Further, on subsequent occasions Moses obtained additional

legislation, including the laws found in Exod. 20:20-23:33, as well as

those in the remainder of the Book of Exodus and in the Books of Leviti-

cus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

A

third possibility exists: the events in Exod. 20:15-19 follow tempo-

rally on Exod. 19: 19 or 19:25, so that the people did not hear any of the

Ten Commandments at all. The people's fear may have resulted from the

extraordinary seismic and meteorological events prior to the theophany

itself, in which case they must have urged Moses to approach God on

their behalf before the revelation began. This assertion may seem odd

since it ignores the sequence of verses in the text of the Pentateuch, but

both ancient and modern interpreters have recognized that the order in

which material is presented in biblical narratives does not always attempt

to mimic the order of the events they describe.16As the thirteenth-century

exegete Nachmanides points out in support of this reading (in his com-

mentary to 20:

15), he people do not say to Moses in 20: 16, "Let not God

speak to us any more, lest we die," but simply, "Let not God speak to

us, lest we die." (In addition, the syntax,

waw

+

noun

+

participle, in

Exod. 20: 15 resembles the phrasing that connotes a past perfect and may

thus indicate that the event described in 20: 15 was not simultaneous with,

but prior to, what precedes it in the text.)17

What was a possible reading for a medieval commentator is an even

more likely one for modern commentators, who view these chapters as

an intermingling of originally independent traditions that describe a

single event from varied points of view. Even if the Pentateuch's editors

did regard the discussion in 20:15-19 as occurring after the revelation

of the Ten Commandments (which is by no means clear), their decision

says nothing about the authors of the older texts they utilized. In fact

(as scholars such as Toeg, Childs, and

S.

R .

Driver point out), there is no

indication that the narrative describing the discussion in 20: 15-19 was

conceived originally (i.e., before the redaction of the Torah) as taking

place after God spoke to the people. In the course of that discussion, nei-

ther Israel nor Moses make any reference to God having spoken,18 and

'"ee the famous dictum of the midrashists, "There is no early or late in the Torah" (e.g. ,

Sifre Bemidbar Par. B'ha'alotka to 9: l ; and, commenting on our passage in Exodus, Song

of Songs Rabbah to 1 2).

I' Compare Joiion and Muraoka, sec. 118, subsec. d; sec. 166, subsec,

j.

I R

As

Toeg (n. 8 above) notes, p. 21. According to this reading, Exod. 20:19 must be the

beginning of a separate unit since it does state that God spoke directly to the nation (though

from heaven, not from the top of Mount Sinai). Nachmanides regards it as the introduction



Revelation at Sinai

20:15-19 would read quite well after 19:19.19 ndeed, many modern in-

terpreters doubt that the text of the Ten Commandments originally ap-

peared in this story in its earlier forms, asserting that

i t

was added to our

text only after the narrative traditions found in chapter 19 and in

20: 15-19 had been combined into their current c~nf igurat ion. '~o the

extent that we can separate out the various textual sources that have been

combined to form Exodus 19-20," it appears clear that in neither J nor

P did the Ten Commandments appear. Baruch Schwartz points out that,

for these two documents, the revelation at Sinai was essentially visual, not

auditory. In the P account of the Sinai event, "no words are spoken, no

Decalogue or other such sample of divine law is proclaimed. Further, na-

ture does not participate: no thunder, lightning, horns, fire, or smoke are

present. Rather, the divine firecloud. . . descends from the heavens to the

mountain." Similarly, J's account eschews auditory phenomena in favor

of visual ones. Only in E (verses 19: 15b-17; 19: 19; chap. 20) does God

speak, and even there one can debate whether or not the people heard

the divinely originating sounds as distinct words." According to most of

the traditions underlying the redacted text of Exodus, then, the nation

did not hear the Ten Commandments at all.

The details of narrative sequence in Exodus 19-20 are famously enig-

to the law code that followrs, not part of the narrative that precedes; so also do Driver and

Childs in their respective Exodus commentaries.

' W n 20:15-18 as the sequel to 19:19, see J . Carpenter and G. Harford-Battersby, The

Hexateuch according to the Revised Ibsion

(London: Longmans, Green, 1900), 1:110. See also

Blum (n. 8 above), pp. 48-50, who characterizes 19:20-25 as an "interpretive development"

of 19:lO-19. Childs (n. 8 above), pp. 350, 351, 353-54, asserts that 20:15-18 had been

located before the Ten Commandments but were moved to their present place by a later

editor; thus, in the text of Exodus as we have it, these verses indicate that the discussion

took place after the revelation, but they originally described the people's refusal to hear the

revelation a t all.

O See esp. Toeg, pp. 17-26; and Thomas Dozeman,

God

on

theMountain

(Atlanta: Scholars,

1989), pp. 47-49.

Scholars debate whether we can successfully assign verses from Exodus 19-20, 24 to

specific sources known elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Schwartz presents a very strong argu-

ment that J ,

E,

and P can be isolated in this section and that each forms an independent

and nearly complete account of a Sinai event: see Schwartz, "The Priestly Account" (n. 8

above), pp. 122-30, and "What Really Happened" (n . 8 above), pp. 20-46; and see further

the still valid approach of Carpenter and Harford-Battersby. However, Dozeman maintains

that these chapters result not from a combination of originally self-contained documents

but from "a process of creative redaction" in which an old layer was repeatedly supple-

mented; see Dozeman, p. 16 and passim; cf. Blurn, pp. 45-99; and ~ i c h tn. 1'1 ad&e),

pp. 252-54.

A A

Schwartz, "Priestly .Account," p. 125. To be sure, for P specific laws were imparted, but

not at Sinai. i s Schwartz shows persuasively (see esp. p. 1 5 ), at Sinai, Moses was shown a

visual model of the tabernacle; the people spent the next year constructing it, and only

then-and there, at the tabernacle rather than on Mount Sinai-did God reveal laws to

Moses individually. On tensions between auditory and visual elements in different tradi-

tions underlying the redacted text, see also Dozeman, pp. 153-56.




matic, as premodern exegetes already attest. For modern critics, these

narrative difficulties are rendered even more complex in light of the liter-

ary history of the sources that were combined to form the text of Exodus

as we know it (and, we might note, also in light of the prehistory of the

oral traditions on which the written sources may depend). For our pur-

poses, it suffices to observe that these chapters raise two closely related

questions: (1) What was the basic nature of the revelation the nation ex-

perienced? Did it consist of an overwhelming event (qol

=

thunder), or

did i t involve specific words (qol

=

voice)? (2) How much of the Ten Com-

mandments did the people hear? Three answers emerge as possible re-

garding this second question: they heard all of the Ten Commandments

(if we understand the textual location of Exod. 20: 15-19 in the redacted

Book of Exodus as reflecting temporal sequence), they heard some of

them (if we understand 20: 15-19 as occurring during the revelation), or

they heard none of them (if we understand 20:15-19 as preceding the

revelation). The second question suggests itself not only because of the

indeterminate narrative order in chapter 20 but also because of the un-

paralleled ambiguity of Exod. 20:

1,

"God spoke all these words, saying

.

.

.

In every other occurrence of this sort of phrasing in the Hebrew

Bible (namely, "Godithe

L O R D

spoke, saying

.

.

. ),

the person or people

addressed by the divinity are specified with the word "to" (thus, "the

L O R D spoke to Moses, saying

.

.

. ).23

Only here is there any doubt about

the recipient of divine speech. This absence bothered ancient translators:

the Alexandrinus codex of the Septuagint adds the words "to Moses,"

while the Old Latin adds "to the pe ~ple . " '~ne senses that the redactor

or author of that verse deliberately authorized the ambiguity regarding

the extent to which the people heard the revelation.

In order to resolve these questions, a biblically oriented Jewish theol-

ogy needs to turn to classical commentaries on Exodus 19-20, not only be-

cause the text itself is so equivocal but because the history of exegesis must

play a central role in any specifically Jewish attempt to wrestle meaning

from the Bible.

The oldest Jewish commentary on the Book of Exodus appears in an-

other biblical text: the Book of Deuteronomy, "the repetition of the law"

(as that book refers to itself in Deut. 17:18). Deuteronomy reformulates

material from earlier books of the Torah, often in such a way as to clarify

ambiguous statements. This exegetical tendency is especially prominent

3

Two apparent exceptions are in fact not exceptions at all; in 2 Kings 21:

10,

the immedi-

ate recipients of the divine speech are introduced by the word "through" rather than "to,"

and in Gen.

17:3,

the recipient is introduced by the word "with."

4 See further Toeg, pp. 62-64.



Revelation at Sinai

in Deuteronomy's depictions of the Sinai event in chapters 4 and

5 .25

n

the former, a later writer has Moses, addressing the people Israel shortly

before his death, recall:

(10) the day you stood before the LO RD your God at Horeb, when the L O R D said

to me, "Gather the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, in order

that they may learn to revere Me as long as they live on earth, and may so teach

their children." (1 1) You came forward and stood at the foot of the mountain.

The mountain was ablaze with flames to the very skies, dark with densest clouds.

(12) Th e L O R D spoke to you out of the fire; you heard the sound of words [OJPS:

the voice of words] but perceived no shape-nothing but a voice. (13) He de-

clared to you the covenant that He commanded you to observe, the Ten Com-

mandments.

.

. .

(14) At the same time the

L O R D

commanded me to impart to you

laws and rules for you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into.

(Deut. 4:lO-14 in the NJPS version)

These verses seem to have been written specifically with our two ques-

tions in mind. They explain precisely what was meant by the

qol

in Exo-

dus

19:

Deut.

4:

12

informs us that the nation heard a

qoldevarzm,

a sound

of words-not merely thunder but a voice articulating sounds in order

to communicate meaning. The revelation, in other words, imparted spe-

cific content; it was not only an overwhelming event. Further, Deut. 4:13

makes clear that the people did hear the Ten Commandments; Moses

was commissioned to act as intermediary only for subsequent legislative

disclosures. The next chapter in Deuteronomy also responds deliberately

to the ambiguities of Exodus 19-20:

(2) The

L O R D

our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.

3)

It was not with our

fathers that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us

who is here today. (4) Face to face the LORD spoke to you on the mountain out of

the fire-(3) I stood between the

LORD

and you at that time to convey the

LORD'S

words to you, for you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain-

saying: [there follows the text of the Ten Commandments]. . . . (19) The

LO RD

spoke those words-those and no more-to your whole congregation at the

mountain, with a mighty voice out of the fire and the dense clouds. . . . (20) When

you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire,

you came up to me, all your tribal heads and elders, (21) and said, "The LORD

our God has just shown us His majestic Presence, and we have heard His voice

out of the fire; we have seen this day that man may live though God has spoken

to him. (22) Let us not die, then, for this fearsome fire will consume us; if we hear

the voice of the LORD our God any longer, we shall die. (23) For what mortal ever

5 Toeg especially emphasizes that Deuteronomy 4 and 5 contain instances of inner-

biblical exegesis; see ibid ., pp. 55-58 and 52, n. 8 1. See also Childs, p. 3 43. Similarly, Blum ,

p. 94, shows that Deu t. 4:36 and 5:25-26 set out to clarify the a mb iguou s ter m

nassot

in

Exod.

20:17.




heard the voice of the living God speak out of the fire, as we did, and lived?

(24) You go closer and hear all the

LORD

our God says, and then you tell us

everything that the

LO RD

our God tells you, and we will willingly do it. (Deut.

5:2-3 ,

19-24

in the

NJPS

version)

Deuteronomy 5 acknowledges that the revelation was an overwhelming

and frightening event (stressing the auditory phenomena more than the

visual), but it stipulates in verse 23 that the people heard a qol that

"speaks," not just a

qol

that accompanies lightning and clouds. Moreover,

Deut. 5:20-27 echo Exod. 20: 15-19: coming immediately after the text of

the Ten Commandments, they narrate the people's fearful request that

Moses act as intermediary from now on. Unlike their source in Exodus,

however, they are not phrased ambiguously. From the wording of the el-

ders' comment in Deut. 5:21, we understand that God did speak to them.

(Recall that in Exod. 20:16, it was not specified that the people actually

heard the revelation.) Moses' task is to receive the remainder of the legis-

lation (what verse 28 calls "the whole Instruction").The events recounted in

Deut. 5:20-24 follow the giving of the Ten Commandments both textually

and temporally; the new formulation provided by the Deuteronomist

carefully eliminates the possibility that the people heard only part of the

Ten Commandments or none of it at This particular revelation in-

volved not just Moses or elders but "the whole congregation" (5:19),"every

one of us who is here today" (5:3). Significantly, Deuteronomy revised

the line introducing the Ten Commandments: while Exodus 20: 1 stated

merely, "God spoke all these words, saying. . . , Deut. 5:4-5 read "the LORD

spoke to you [the Hebrew word for "you" is plural, addressed to the nation]

. . .

saying.

. .

Like the ancient translations of Exod. 20: 1 cited above, the

Deuteronomist attempts to remedy the unusual absence of a preposi-

tional phrase indicating the addressee of the divine speech. Further, the

text stresses that the people had direct contact with God-"face-to-face''

in the Hebrew idiom of verse

5.

The revelation was a public one, not a

mediated one; on this point Deuteronomy is both insistent and clear.

Clear-yet equivocal. Deut. 5:5 contradicts the verse that comes before

it (as well as 4: 12-13 and 5: 19-20). Immediately after the vivid descrip-

tion of the unmediated meeting of God and Israel in Deut. 5:4, there

follows a comment announcing that Moses acted as intercessor: "(4) Face

to face the LORD

spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire-(5) I

stood between the

L O R D

and you at that time to convey the

LORD'S

words

to you, for you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain-

saying: . . . Rashi notes that verse 5 is parenthetical, except for its last

word ("saying"). That word belongs to the sentence in verse 4 since it

'6 Also see Childs, p. 351. Similarly, Childs, p. 343 , points ou t th e am biguity ofqol in Exod.

19:19 an d also notes tha t Deu t. 4:10, 4:33, 5:4, an d 5:22 decisively resolve the ambiguity.



Revelation at Sinai

completes the phrase in verse 4 which begins with the words "the LORD

spoke." We can go a step further than Rashi: verse 5, other than the word

"saying," is a later addition to the text. It includes the formula "at that

time," which (as Samuel Loewenstamm has demonstrated) consistently

serves in Deuteronomy to indicate redactional interp~lations.'~his in-

terpolation attempts to reintroduce Exodus's idea of a mediated revela-

tion into Deuteronomy. Exodus 19-20 reflected a debate between notions

of public and private (i.e., Mosaic) revelation; opposing traditions were

edited together in Exodus to produce a text that can be read in several

ways. Deuteronomy, acting as commentary on (or more precisely, revision

of) Exodus, decides in favor of the view that revelation at Sinai was public.

However, a glossator who agrees with the older notion of private or medi-

ated revelation acts as a supercommentator, inserting words that reflect

Exod. 19:9 and 19:19 (where the people merely overhear God's revela-

tion to Moses) and Exod. 20:15-19 (in their preredactional positiori and,

if one reads their initial verb in a fashion that agrees with Nachrnanides'

reading of Exod. 20:15, in their current position as well). Interestingly,

this supercommentator, by utilizing the formula "at that time," has clearly

marked his interpolation as such. Thus this passage in Deuteronomy

functions like a page in a midrashic collection or a Miqra'ot Gedolot, pre-

senting more than one reading of Exodus 19.

As

a result of the interpola-

tion, the final version of the text contradicts itself: Deut. 5:4-5 in their

present form reproduce precisely the ambiguity the interpolator had at-

tempted to re~olve.'~ltimately, then, Deuteronomy leaves the question

open.2g

27

See Sam uel Loewenstamm , "T he Formula 'At Th at Tim e' in the Introductory Speeches

in the B ook of Deuteronomy," Tarbiz 38 (1969 ): 99-104 (in H ebrew ). Loe wen stam m collects

fourtee n o the r exam ples in chap ters 1-10 in which conte xt shows tha t the sections starting

with this formu la, "at tha t time:' ar e secondary. O n pp . 103-4, h e points ou t the contrad ic-

tion between 5:5 and 5:4 in particular.

28

T hu s D euteronom y 5 presages a tendency that will become prom inent in later Jewish

literature: texts that a ttem pt to redu ce comp lex traditions to definitive compen dia are typi-

cally subject to comm entaries th at reinscribe the ea rlier complexity. This was the fate of the

Mishna, whose clarity and brevity are followed by the Gemaras' intricate and extended

discourses; it was also the fate of Maim onides' code, w hich becam e canonical only alongside

the whole literature of com mentary a nd supercom mentary it attracted. (Maimonides' deci-

sion to borrow Deuteronomy's self-appellation "Mishneh Torah" for his code was perhaps

unintentionally ap t.) O n this tendency in Jewish learnin g, see David

h7eissHalivni, Midrash,

Mishna, and Gemara: TheJewish Predilection for Justijied Law (Cam bridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1986 ), pp . 108-15. O n the parallel betw een the multivocality of postbiblical

Jewish commentary and that of biblical texts, see my comments in "The Scroll of Isaiah

as Jewish Scripture" (n. 2 above), pp. 241-42; an d Moshe Greenberg, "T he True Meaning

of the Bible," in his collection of essays, On the Bible and Judaism, ed . Avraham Shapira

(Tel Aviv: Am Ov ed, 1984), pp. 345-49 (in Heb rew).

29 S. R. Driver, in

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy

(Edinburgh:

T. & T. Clark , 1902), argue s that 5:5 is not really contradictory: " T he peo ple he ard the

'voice' of God, but not distinct words; the latter Moses declared (i1g;l) to them after-




The Bible contains another repetition of or commentary on Exodus

19-20. Exodus 24 seems to cover the same ground as chapter 19 and

verses 20: 15-19, often using the same vocabulary to do so. The Mekhilta

of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai points out that in both texts God directs

Moses to "come up" to God along with Aaron (19:24, 24:l); in both, the

people are "far off" (20:15, 24:l); both specify that only Moses "ap-

proached" God (20:18,24:2). Thus the Mekhilta concludes that these two

texts describe a single event.g0Rashi arrives at a similar conclusion: chap-

ter 24 narrates events that preceded the giving of the Ten Command-

ments, thus overlapping with chapter 19. To be sure, other readings are

p~ss ib le ,~ 'ut it is at least plausible to read Exodus 24 as another repre-

sentation of the events described in Exodus 19-20.32

How does chapter 24 address the two questions with which we are con-

cerned? Significantly, this chapter does not portray the people as hearing

anything at all. The auditory imagery that appears so prominently in

chapter 19 and in Deuteronomy 4-5 is completely lacking here. Likewise

absent are any other aspects of the trembling of nature associated with

Baal's theophany in Canaanite literature and found in texts such as Judg.

5:4-5, Hab. 3:3-6, Ps. 18:s-16, Ps. 29:3-9, and Ps. 68:s-11. Rather, the

elders and Moses are vouchsafed the sight of I'HWH. This text would an-

swer our first question ("What was the go that the people heard?") by

wards (p.84).Thus, Driver argues, Deuteronomy as a whole, and notjust Deut. 5:5,agrees

with Exod. 19:9 and 19:19. ( Asimilar reading is adopted by Moshe Weinfeld,Deuteronomy

1-11

[New York: Doubleday, 19911, who acknowledges that Deut. 5:5

i s

an interpolation

but who sees it as not necessarily contracting 5:4; f.Toeg [n.8 above],p. 58.) This interpre-

tation is not compelling. It contradicts Deut. 4:12 (according to which the people heard not

an indistinct noise but the sound o f words ). Further, it does not even agree with Exodus

19 since Deut. 5:4 still emphasizes the face-to-face revelation that does not occur in the

former. On the verse's ambiguity, see also Dozeman, p: 165.

30 J

Epstein and E . Melamed, eds., Mekhilta d'Rabbi Simhn b. Yochai (1955; eprint, Jerusa-

lem: Hillel, 1979), p. 220. For a list o f additional correspondences, see Toeg, pp. 40-41.

The Mekhilta o f Rabbi Yishmael reaches a similar conclusion: the events described in this

chapter took place on the f ifth of Sivan (one day before the giving o f the Ten Command-

ments and one day after the washing described in 19:lO). See Mechilta d'Rabbi Ismael,

ed. H. Horowitz and

I

Rabin (1931;reprint, Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1970),p. 211.

3 1 Some commentators view the chapter as an event that took place after the Ten Com-

mandments were given. See esp. Nachmanides to 24 :l;and see Childs (n .8 above),p. 504.

On the very complicated traditional historical issues in this chapter, see Toeg, pp. 39-43;

Childs, pp. 499-502; and Blum (n.8 above), pp. 90-99.

32

Many modern scholars argue that Exod. 24: 1-2, 9-1

1

continue the

J

account left o f f t

19:25,while 24:3-8, 12-15, continue the

E

account that left

off

at 23:33 (see,e.g., Schwartz,

What Really Happened [n .8 above],pp. 24-26). In this case, it is clear that for the docu-

ments underlying the current Book o f Exodus, chap. 24 preserves recollections o f he event

described in chap. 19. By placing these verses in their own chapter, the redactors have

transformed those recollections, allowing us to read them either as another representation

o f he event (see Rashi, Mekhilta) or as a distinct event (Nachmanides, Childs).



Revelation a t Sinai

saying, "There were no sounds; the revelation was visual, not aural."j3

Because Exod. 24:ll portrays the elders as eating and drinking during

or immediately after the vision, one does not have the sense that the reve-

lation was a tremendously overpowering event.

As

to our second question

("How much of the Ten Commandments did the people hear?"), this text

does not mention them hearing commandments or words of any kind

from God. Indeed, the nation as a whole was not present for the vision.

Only the elders and members of Moses' own family see

YHWH,

and Moses

alone receives laws.

Later biblical commentators also addressed our second question. In

rabbinic and medieval exegesis, two schools of thought emerged. One

school (which we might term "maximalist") highlights the sequence of

texts in Exodus 19. The people expressed their fear after the revelation,

and thus they heard all of the Ten Commandments. These commenta-

tors, in other words, follow in the interpretive path initiated by Deuter-

onomy (minus the interpolation in Deut. 5:5). Commenting on Exod.

20:16, the Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael presents this interpretation: ' 2 n d

they said to Moses, 'You speak wzth us so that we maj hear'

(Exodus 20: 16). This

tells us that they did not have enough strength to receive any more than

the Ten Commandments, as

i t

is said, 'If we continue to hear

YHTVH

our

God any more, we shall die' (Deuteronomy 5:12). Rather, [they said,] 'You

go near and hear' (Deuteronomy 5:27). From that time forth Israel meri-

ted that prophets would appear from among them, as i t is said, 'I will

repeatedly raise a prophet for them' (Deuteronomy 18: 18)." The people

lacked strength to hear "any more than the Ten Commandmentsn-in

other words, they did hear that much. Rashi's grandson, Rashbam, makes

a similar point in his commentary on Exod. 20:16: "And after they heard

the Ten Commandments,

they sazd to Moses, 'You speak to us

. . .'. And if they

had not said this, one must conclude that the Holy One would have told

them all the commandments dire~tly."~'

But other texts view Exod. 20:15-18 as having taken place durzng

the revelation. According to this school of thought (which we might

term "minimalist"), the nation heard only the first two of the Ten Com-

3 3

It seems likely that Deuteronomy's insistence that the people "saw no form" (Deut.

4:12, 4: 15) repudiates Exodus 24 or the

J

account of revelation specifically; here we see an

exam ple not of intrabiblical exegesis but intrabiblical polemic. C om pa re Schwartz, "Priestly

Account" (n. 8 above),

p.

130.

34

Horowitz and Rabin, eds.,

p.

237.

j

See also Seforno on Exod. 20 :l; an d ibn Ezra in his long commen tary to Exod. 20:16.

Rashbam seems to think it was lamentable that the nation declined the op portunity to re-

ceive additiona l revelations; see Martin Lockshin, RashbamS Comm entay on Exodus: An Anno-

tated Translation

(Atlanta: Scholars, 1 997), p . 219, n . 27.




m and m ents . Th e debate is presented clearly in Song of Songs Rab bah to

Songs 1:2:

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the sages disagreed. Rabbi Joshua said: Israel heard

two of the ten commandments directly from the Holy One: "I am YHWH" and

"You shall not have." This is what is meant by the verse, "Let him kiss me with

some

of his kisses" (Song of Songs 1.2),-not all of the kisses. [In rabbinic exegesis,

the Song of Songs is often understood to describe the meeting of God and Israel

at Sinai. According to this verse, then, Israel had direct contact with God for only

some of the "kisses" or divine utterances, not for all ten of them.] But the sages

say: Israel heard all of the ten commandments directly from the Holy One. Rabbi

Joshua of Sikhnin . . . explains the reasoning of the sages as stemming from the

verse, "And they said to Moses, 'You speak to us that we may hear"' (Exodus

20.16). How did Rabbi Joshua ben Levi respond to this? He disagreed [with the

use of the verse, noting that] there is no early or late in the Torah [i.e., the presen-

tation of events in the Torah does not always mimic narrative sequence, and thus

the people could have spoken this verse after the Second ~omLandment].But

the Israelites could have said, "You speak with us . . . after two or after three

commandments [That is, strictly speaking, R. Joshua's interpretation does stip-

ulate that the people heard the first two commandments; rather, they heard

"somen-more than one but less than ten. How, then, do we know that they heard

two commandments?] R. Azaria and R. Judah bar Simon supported the viewpoint

of R. Joshua ben Levi, citing the verse, "Moses commanded us Torah" (Deuter-

onomy 33.4). The whole Torah consists of 613 commandments. But the numeri-

cal value of the Hebrew word "Torah" is only 61 1, [and thus there are 61 1 com-

mandments] which Moses spoke to us "I am YHWH" and "You shall not have,"

were not spoken to us by Moses; rather, we heard them directly from the mouth

of the Holy One.

R. Joshua's opinion an d th e reasoning used by R. Azaria a n d R. Ju d ah

also app ea r in the Talm ud, b. Makkot 23b-24a, where i t is at tributed to

R. H a m n ~ n a . ~ ~hese rabbis conclude from Deut. 33:2 that Moses him-

self taug ht 61 1 com man dm ents to Israel since on e migh t rea d that verse

as "Moses tau gh t us 61 1 (= Torah)." This is two fewer th an the traditional

rabbinic calculation of the co mm andm ents. T h e missing two, then , mu st

j The midrash from Song of Songs Rabbah also appears in Pesikta Rabbati

22.

The opin-

ion that the nation heard only the first two commandments may be attributed to R. Yish-

mael in b. Horayot 8a as well, but this is not fully clear, as Baruch Schwartz carefully demon-

strates in his article, 'I am the Lord' and 'You Shall Have No Other Gods' Were Heard

from the Mouth of the Almighty: On the Evolution of an Interpretation," in

The Bible

in

Light of Its Interpreters: The Sarah Kam in Memorial Volume, ed. Sara Japhet (Jerusalem: Magnes,

1994), pp. 170-97, esp. pp. 180-91. However, Schwartz's argument that the interpretation

in Song of Songs Rabbah and b. Makkot grew out of a misunderstanding of R. Yishrnael's

statement in b. Horayot is not fully convincing since it depends on his presumption that all

the other texts depend on Horayot 8a. It is equally possible that the interpretation began

with R. Joshua and was subsequently grafted onto R. Yishmael's statement in Horayot.

Further, if the Munich manuscript of Horayot is correct to attribute the statement to

R. Shimon, then Schwartz's intricate reasoning suffers a severe blow.



Revelation at Sinai

have been heard directly by the nation. These unmediated command-

ments must have been transmitted at Sinai, which is the only legislative

scene in the Bible where the nation was clearly present. Thus Deut. 33:4

supports the conclusion R. Joshua reached on the basis of Song of Songs

1:2. These interpretive deductions may seem far-fetched, but a twelfth-

century French exegete supports the same opinion on the basis of reason-

ing that modern readers will appreciate quite readily. Rabbi Yosef Qara

is quoted in the commentary of Yosef Bekhor Shor on Exod. 20: 1:

The Rabbis said that the people heard the First and Second Commandments

directly from God and the rest from Moses. R. Yosef Qara of blessed memory

explained that Scripture itself proves this, because the first two are spoken as if

H e Himself was speaking to th em [i.e., God refers to Himself there in the first

person:

"I

am the L ord"]. But from the Thi rd an d o n, it is as if H e speaks through

a messenger [because the Thi rd C om m andm ent refers to God in the third per-

son : "You shall no t sw ear by th e LORD'S nam e in vain"]. . . . Th us it says, "For H e

will not acquit," not "I will not acquit"; "The LORD made the world in six days,"

not , "I m ade the w orld in six days," etc Si

According to the minimalist position, the people heard God's

go

in the

sense of "voice" only briefly. For the most part, what they experienced

was an overwhelming event, not the communication of specific content.

Later minimalist commentary limited the verbal content of the revela-

tion experienced by the nation even more. Maimonides writes that the

people at Sinai "heard the great voice, but not the articulation of speech"

from the divine (Guide, 2:33 [75a]).38Moreover, he minimizes even the

extent to which the nation truly heard the first and second of the Ten

Commandments: "Know that with regard to that voice [through which

the first two commandments were apprehended], too, their rank was not

equal to the rank of Moses our Master."" Several centuries later, a more

mystically inclined reader went even further. The hasidic rebbe Naftali

Tzvi Horowitz of Ropshitz (died 1827) quotes his teacher, Menachem

Mendel of Rymanov (died 1815) as presenting an especially fascinating

3

Th e same line of thoug ht is summarized by ibn Ezra to 20: 1, thou gh he apparently

rejects it in 20: 16. Rashi affirms th at the peop le h ear d only the first two comm andm ents in

his com me ntary to E xod. 19:19 an d N um . 15:22, 31. However, at Exod. 20:1, Rashi ma in-

tains that th e people h eard all ten of the comm andments from God directly (in fact, they

heard them twice). On this contradiction in Rashi, see Schwartz,

"'I

am the Lord,"'

pp. 184-86, 193-95.

3R

Moses Maimonides,

Tlle Guide o the Perplexed,

trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 19 63), p. 364. M aimonides is trouble d by the p hra se,

qol

divarim in

Deut. 4:12, an d h e argues that the presence of the p hrase "voice of words" ra ther than just

"words" shows that the nation hear d a soun d but not words directly. Th us he attem pts to

read the minimalist position into a line that was intended to clarify Exodus 19 according to

the m aximalist one.

bid., p. 365.




understanding of the revelation at Sinai: "It was possible that we heard

from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, only the letter aleph of

anokhin-that is, the first letter of the first word ("I") of the First Com-

mandment.40This statement has gained fame for its paradox: the conso-

nant aleph is silent. It represents a glottal stop-a constriction of the back

of the throat that is itself noiseless but that permits the sound of a vowel

to follow. A n aleph creates the verbal spa& for discourse, but it is not

itself an utterance. In other words, at Sinai, Israel heard nothing, but it

did experience a revelation, a wordless, inarticulate signification of God's

commanding presence.

For Menachem Mendel and Naftali Tzvi, the Sinaitic aleph constituted

a genuine breakthrough of the divine into the human consciousness.

Their understanding of God's silent disclosure is not identical to the sug-

gestion that the people did not experience revelation at all

(i.e., the tradi-

tion that appeared, according to scholars such as Toeg, in prebiblical texts

now edited into the Bible as Exod. 20:15-18 and Exodus 33-34).41 The

people did hear something, though what they "heard" was a sound that

was silent. Naftali Tzvi explains that the aleph heard by the people is

referred to again in Exod. 20:15, in which "all the people saw the sounds

(qolot)." What can it mean to "see a sound," in particular to see the sound

of the letter aleph? Addressing this well-known textual conundrum,'*

Naftali Tzvi explains that the shape of the letter aleph

(K)

consists of

the letter waw surrounded by two yods (K = 77.1). The numerical value

of the letters yod-waw-yod equals 26, which is also the numerical value of

the divine name or tetragrammaton. The "aleph" the people sawlheardl

experienced thus amounted to God's name or presence. Further, he spells

out, these letters resemble a face; the yods are the eyes, the waw the nose.

Hence Deut. 5:4's statement that

"YHUJH

spoke face-to-face" with Israel;

40

See Naftali Tzvi Horowitz of Ropshitz, Zera' Qodesh (re prin t, Jerusale m, 1971), 2:40a.

Naftali refers to this teaching again in 1:72a, this time without me ntionin g Menachem Men-

del. A slightly different version of this tradition is reported by Horowitz's brother-in-law,

Asher Isaiah Lipm an (died 1845), in his book, 'Or Yesha' (re pri nt, New York: Beit H illel,

1984 ), p . 7a. (My thanks to Professor Daniel M att and Rabbi Michael Balinsky for help ing

m e to locate these passages.) According to Lipm an, the n ation hea rd th e aleph along with

its vowel (so that it did have some sou nd) . Th is version allows Lipm an to derive a moralistic

lesson from the Rymanover's interpre tation that is unrelated to the issue of revelation itself.

For other references to this teaching in Hasidic literature, see M. Weisbaum, ed., Yalqut

Menachem

(Jerusale m: Machon Siftei Tsadiqim, 1986), pp. 158-59. T h e association between

Mendel's interpretation and Maimonides' comm ents in Guide 2:33 is noted in Ahron Mar-

cus, Der Chasszdismus:Ein e Kulturgeschzchtlzche Stud ie (Pleschen: Jesch urun , 1901), p. 239; an d

in Gershom Scholem, O n the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Mannheim (London:

Routledge

&

Kegan, 1965), pp. 30-31. Both these books attribute the Rymanover's teaching

to his work Torat Mena chem (also know n a s Menachem Tsion),where it does not in fact appea r.

4 See Toeg (n . 8 above), pp. 16,49 -5 1.

42 O n which, see Eliot Wolfson, "T h e Herm eneu tics of Visionary Experience: Revelation

and Interpretat ion in the

Zohar, Religion

18 (1988 ): 31 1-45, esp. 31 3 and n. 11.



Revelation at Sinai

Israel saw the divine countenance at Sinai, not as a form but as a sound

(i.e., as an aleph that was at once a face and the equivalent of God's

name). Naftali Tzvi explains that his concept of seeing God not as form

but as sound accords with Deut. 4:12 ("you heard the sound of words but

perceived no shape-nothing but a voice") as well as, or in combination

with, Exod. 20:15. Indeed, he goes on to argue (employing even more

complex reasoning based on gematria) that the aleph in some sense con-

tained in latent form all 248 positive and 365 negative commandment^.^^

However different Naftali Tzvi's interpretive norms are from our own, it

is clear that for him the revelation through silence at Sinai was a genuine

disclosure of God's being, of God's "face" or "presence," to Israel; more-

over it was a perception of divine command.

Menachem Mendel goes beyond the rabbinic notion that the nation

received only part of the Ten Commandments; he proposes a final, radi-

cal variation of the minimalist position that was found in Song of Songs

Rabbah, b. Makkot, and Yosef Qara's comment on Exod. 20:l. Yet Mena-

chem Mendel's extreme minimalism in relation to Exodus 19-20 is not

new in Jewish tradition. It returns us, I think, to a much earlier interpre-

tation of the Sinai events. For this interpretation, we need to turn to the

culmination of the Elijah cycle in the Books of Kings. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah

the Tishbite achieved a victory over the prophets of Baal and Asherah at

Mount Carmel. His demonstration of the powerlessness or nonexistence

of these Canaanite deities infuriated Queen Jezebel in chapter 19, and

Elijah therefore fled to Sinai. Elijah's experience there patterns itself af-

ter stories of Moses at the same mountain, as many commentators have

pointed out (notice, e.g., the motif of a forty-day fast in 1 Kings 19:7,

which recalls Moses' fast in Exod. 34:28).44 few lines in this narrative

concern us in particular.

1

Kings 19:ll-12 are marked off in the text

because the verses that precede them are repeated immediately after

them as well. Such repetitions in biblical texts indicate the literary integ-

rity of the section in between; in most cases, these sections are later addi-

tions to the text.45Thus the verses in question appear to be a secondary

43 See 2:40b, summ arized in l: 7l b. To give bu t one examp le of Naftali Tzvi 's reasoning:

God appeared to Israel through the "great aleph (a'rabbati) of the word "anokhi," a nd the

numerical value of a' rabbatz is 613. Through considerably more complex (and clever)

reasoning, he shows that G od's revelation th roug h the aleph

(=

yodlwaw/yod = God's face)

involves 248 positives and 365 negatives. In asserting tha t the Ten C om m and me nts con-

tained all 613 co mm and m ents, Naftali Tzvi elaborates an old mystical tradition, o n w hich,

see W olfson, pp . 316-17.

44 See, amo ng oth ers , Cross (n. 12 above), pp . 192-93; Yair Zakovitch, Qol D lm m ah Daq-

qah, Tarbiz 51 (1982): 334-35, 345 (in Hebrew); and Marsha W hite, The Elijah Legends and

Jehu? Coup (Atlanta: S cholars, 1 997 ), pp . 4-1 1.

5 Th is principle was identified by

C .

Kuhl, "Die 'Wiederaufnahme'-ein literarkritisches

Prinzip?" Zeitschrzft fur die alttejtamentliche Wissenschaft 64 (1952): 1-1 1. Ernst Wiirthwein



The Journal

of

Religion

addition to the finale of the Elijah cycle though they engage two motifs

found in the story as a whole: the conflict with Baal and the comparison

with the Sinai revelation. The crucial verses read: "[God] said [to Elijah],

'Go out, and stand at the mountain in

YHUJH'S

presence.' And-look -

YHUJH was passing by, but before YHWH there was a great and mighty

wind tearing mountains apart and smashing stones; YHWH was not in the

wind. And after the wind, an earthquake;

Y H W H

was not in the earth-

quake. And after the earthquake, fire;

YHWH

was not in the fire. And after

the fire, a sound (901) of thin utter silence (dgmamah daqqah). When Elijah

heard, he covered his face with his mantle, went out, and stood at the

entrance of the cave" (1 Kings

19:ll-13a). This passage modifies earlier

Israelite conceptions of theophany. It argues against the Canaanite model

according to which

Y H W H ,

like Baal, utilized storms and earthquakes as

instruments of self-revelation. In so doing, the text also contests, or at

least refines, the portrayal of the event that had taken place at Sinai cen-

turies earlier.'6 YHWH'S manifestation is not a matter of loud noises and

spectacular natural phenomena (though, to be sure, those phenomena

may precede or accompany re~elation).~'ather, God becomes known

through a sound (901) of silence (dzmamah);God has a voice, but it is inau-

convincingly shows that 1 Kings 19:ll-1 3a ar e a late addition to ou r text; see "Elijah at

Horeb," in

Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honour of Gw ynne Henton Davies,

ed . John H . Dur ham and J. R. Porter (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983),

pp . 152-66, esp. pp. 160-62.

46

Many scholars have read this passage either as a polemic against Canaanite influence

in Israelite religion or as a respo nse to th e stories found in Exodus 19; see, e.g., Cross,

pp. 193-94; a nd Jeremia s (n. 12 above), pp. 112-15. C assuto (n. 9 above), pp . 159-60, also

notes the connection between this text and Exodus 19, bu t he rejects the notion that the

latter opposes th e former. However, he goes on to claim that the Ten C om ma ndm ents were

given in total silence-i.e., tha t the various noises described in Exod. 19:16, 19 were no

longer occurring du rin g the theophan y itself (p. 162; also see Exodus Rabbah 29:9). Th us

Cassuto (an d Exodus Rabbah) read the Elijah notion of theophany into the Exodus theoph-

any. It was precisely such a reading of the older texts that the interpolator in 1 Kings 19

intended to foster. Richard Elliot Friedman, in

The Disappearance of God: Dzvine Mystery

(New York: Little, Brown, 1997), pp . 23-24, suggests an alterna tive reading, according to

which this passage indicates the cessation of the process of divine revelation in the Heb rew

Bible; the sort of clear divine manifestation tha t rea ched a high p oint a t Sinai in M oses' day

comes to a close in this passage. If this is the case, the passage is not a polemic against the

view of revelation seen in Exodus 19. Friedman's reading works well in the context of a

canonical interpreta tion since (Fried ma n points ou t) the divine voice becomes less and less

common in the Tanakh as one moves from Torah to the end of the Ketuvim (though he

overstates his case in claiming tha t Y H I V H no longer speaks in narrative passages after this

one; see, e.g., Job

1-2

a n d

38).

However, in light of the clearly polemical cast of

2

Kings

18-19 an d t he distin ct n at ur e of 2 Kings 19: 11-13a, it is also justifiable to read the se verses

indep enden tly (i.e., outside of the broad canonical contex t) as a response to tho se models

of revelation that describe the ophan y in Baalistic term s.

4 See Wurthwein's important reservations to the idea that the interpolation completely

rejects this sort of imagery; ra ther, it re present s "very subtle reflection" on (or clarification

of ) the a lready existing tradition (Wurthw ein, pp. 158, 164).



Revelation at Sinai

dible." One might object, incidentally, that God does speak with a normal

voice in other verses nearby (1 Kings 19:9 and 15-16). Those verses, how-

ever, belong to the original Elijah story; our short theological interpola-

tion is limited to 11-13a. Like Exodus 24 and the P and J strands in Ex-

odus 19, this interpolation discards the notion that God becomes manifest

through storm and thunder and earthquake. But 1 Kings 19:ll-13a go

further, eschewing a visual revelation as well. Almost alone among biblical

texts, these verses depict God as wholly inc~rporeal,'~ccessible to nei-

ther the eye nor the ear but evident to an inward sense that can hear si-

lence. Our examination of 1 Kings 19, then, demonstrates that the reading

of Sinai advanced by Menachem Mendel of Rymanov is not a new one,

nor is it only a logical extension of the interpretations of Joshua ben Levi,

Hamnuna, and Yosef Qara. Menachem articulates a view already found

in the story of Elijah (who, as the one who brings tidings of comfort, might

also be termed "Menachem," which means "comforter"): for the sound of

an aleph is nothing other than a qol dzmamah daqqah, "a sound of thin utter

silence."" Both our Menachems, then, the Tishbite and the Rymanover,

imagine a peculiar type of perception, one that listens to a sound at once

4 T h a t he silent qol embodies God's presence is made explicit in the Septuagint to 19:12,

in Targum to 19:11, and in Radak's commentary on 19: 12. See further the convincing rhe-

torical analysis of this issue by Zakovitch, p. 340.

4y

Th e only other biblical text that shares this intensely nonanthropomorphic view of God

is that of the prophet of comfort, Deutero-Isaiah; see Moshe Weinfeld, "God the Creator in

Gen. 1 and the Prophecy of Second Isaiah," Tarbzz 37 (1968): 105-32 (in Hebrew). Not until

Maimonides did this notion of an utterly incorporeal deity become standard in Judaism.

j0

My argument rests on the translation ofdgrmmah as "utter silence." Others understand

the term as indicating a whispering or rushing sound or a low rumble rather than complete

stillness (see, e.g., the commentaries of Ralbag and Yosef Qara to ou r verse, and the Septua-

gint's rendering as "breeze, stream"). This understanding also yields the basic idea of revela-

tion I am outlining (namely, a divine self-disclosure that consists of neither loud Baalisticl

Sinaitic noises nor clearly articulated words). However, it would weaken the parallel I posit

between 1 Kings 19: 12 and the remark of Menachem Mendel as reported by Naftali Tzvi.

Detailed attention to the term is therefore necessary, The word dimamah appears onlj two

other times in the Masoretic Text of the Bible. In Ps. 107:28-30, it is equated with the

situation created by the verbs hshah and shataq, both of which mean "become silent." In

Job 4:16, the term is ambiguous. Because the speaker there hears "dinmmah and qol," one

might argue that the former must be audible; hence one would translate, "I heard a low

hushed sound and [separately] a voice." But it is also possible that the two nouns together

represent a case of hendiadys, a very common technique in biblical poetry (on which, see

W. Watson, Classical Hebreur Poetry: A Gz~zde o

Its

Techniques [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

Press, 19841, pp. 324-28): dimumah ("silence")

+

qol ("voice, sound")

=

"whisper, hushed

noise." Hence Rashi paraphrases this verse, "I was hearing the whispered sound of a word."

(He also notes another possibility:

"I

heard a voice out of dimumah, but I did not hear

dgmarnah"; this understanding seems to assume that dimamah by definition is not audible.)

Thus the verse from Job may fit the translation I suggest, though another possibility sug-

gests itself as well. In addition, the term appears in lQIsaa 47:5 in place of the Masoretic

Text's dumam, which means "silence"; the substitution suggests that dimamah also can carry

this meaning. ( In lQIsaa 33:3 the term appears again, but context is not definitive since the

term could mean either "silence" or "low sound" depending on whether the verse displays




present and still, a consciousness that attends to the glottal stop which

introduces the "I" that is God but does not utter it.jl

While 1 Kings 19:11-13 contain the Bible's strongest statement on this

model of revelation, intimations of similar ideas appear in other biblical

passages. Job 4:16 uses language nearly identical to 1 Kings 19:ll-13 to

describe a revelation. It may be significant that Ezekiel 1:25 associates a

qol with God but does not describe its sound or volume, in contrast to the

loud qolot of the seraphim in Ezek. 1:24.As in 1 Kings 19:11-13, the go1

of

YHWH

is preceded by tumultuous noises but is distinct from them. Just

as Y H W H is revealed amid silence, so too Israel's most intense communica-

tion with

YHWH

occurs in silence: "To you, God in Zion, silence (dumiyyah)

is praise" (Ps. 65:2).j2Yehezkel Kaufmann has famously argued that wor-

antithetic or specificatory parallelism.) The word dimamah meaning "silence" appears in

postbiblical literature as well. For a particularly clear example, see the early medieval work

The Aleph-Bet of Ben Sira, p. 22a (cited in E. Ben-Yehudah, T he saum Uerusalem and Tel

Aviv: Ben Yehu dah Society, 1908-591, 2:9 64a): "T he fou rth bri gad e passed in silence (bishti-

qah), an d even the s ound of the horses' feet was not hea rd; th ere was just utter silence

(dim amah daqqah). T h e many occurrences of the word in 4 Q ShirShabbat are not definitive,

b u t

qwl dmmt shq;

in 4Q405 19:7 there suggests that the term can be equated with silence,

as doe s the phra sing of 4Q405 20-21-22 , lines 12-13. Similarly, Sifre Num ber s N aso 58, in

H . S. Horowitz, ed.,

Sifre d'be Rab

(Leipzig: Gustav Fock, 19 17), p . 56 , glosses

dimamah

with

the word shitzqah while paraphrasing our verse from 1 Kings. Additional support for my

translation of the t erm comes from its etymology. It is the nou n cor respond ing to th e verb

damam, which app ea rs very often an d m eans "be silent, becom e quiet." F urther, this gemi-

nate root is related to the middle-weak root

dum,

from which derive the frequently ap-

pearing nouns

dumah and dumiyyah, both of which mean "silence." (On the relationship

between geminate a nd middle-weak roots, see, e.g., Joiion and Muraoka (n . 14 above),

secs. 800, 830.) This intra-Hebrew etymology appears superior to the comparison of the

noun to the Akkadian verb damrimu ("to mourn , to moan"), which might su ppor t rende ring

dimamah as "m oa n, low o r hush ed sound." (For a kindred analysis of this noun , cf. Jerem ias

(n . 12 above), pp . 114-15. O n the alt ogethe r unlikely suggestion of J. Lust tha t

qol dlmam ah

daqqah be translate d, "a roarin g a nd thu nd ero us voice" ["'A Gentle Breeze . . . ? Vetus Testa-

mentum

25 (1975 ): 110-151, see Jeremias's c ritique, p. 176.) T he word

dimamah

surely meant

"silence" a nd may also have had the sense of "hushe d sou nd , whisper" in biblical Hebrew.

If so, the apparently unnecessary adjective daqqah in 1 Kings 19: 12 may have bee n add ed

to show that th e m ore m inimal sense was inten de d. At the very least, we can conclu de that

on e possible readin g of the verse presents a striking parallel to the muc h late r comm ent of

Menachem Mendel.

j

Th is perspective differs from th at of Deuteronomy, which insists that the natio n he ard

the entirety of the Te n C om ma ndm ents. However, Deuteronom y shares an affinity with the

Rym anoverrrishbite approach. Geller shows that Deuteronom y 4 carefully contrasts hear-

ing to seeing. T h at ch apt er insists on th e theological superio rity of the for m er: God revealed

Himself thro ugh soun d rather than sight because the for me r allowed God to remain t ran-

scendent. (See Stephen Geller, "Fiery Wisdom: Logos and Lexis in Deuteronomy 4,"

Prooftexts 14 [1994]: 103-39, esp. 133.) Similarly a revelation th rou gh a "thin s ou nd of

utter silence" projects a sign of divine presence into the world without requiring any sort

of incarnation.

j On the u nder stand ing of this verse in Jewish tradition, see the com mentators on th e

verse and also Rashi to Exod. 1 5 : l l . Co mp are Pss. 4:5, 62:2, and see further on this theme

Maim onides ( n. 38 above), 1:59, pp . 139-40.



Revelation at Sinai

ship at the altar according to priestly legislation was conducted in silence.j3

Finally, it seems appropriate that the God who is manifest in a sound of

thin silence is known by the names

Y H W H

and Yah, which consist entirely

of sounds that are barely sounds at all: the liquid glides Y and W (conso-

nants that are almost vowels) and the mere rush of air that is the H.j4

Let us return to the two questions we are posing in regard to the event

at Sinai. (1) What is the basic nature of the revelation Israel experi-

enced-was it an overwhelming event devoid of specific content or did it

involve distinct words? In this TishbiteIRymanover reading (which reacts

to some components of Exodus 19-24 even as it extends the formulation

found in J , in P and in Exodus 24), the answer is neither. Revelation did

not entail distinct words or even sounds. Yet it was not an overwhelming

event, or it was overwhelming only in a way that differs materially from

the Canaanite-influenced imagery of Exodus 19. (2) How much of the

Ten Commandments did the nation hear? They heard no words, just as

they saw no form, because there were no words to hear. The revelation

was no more and no less than a signification of divine communication,

an intimation of something beyond words or shapes, a trace that discloses

a real and commanding presence.55

A comparable understanding of revelation at Sinai is expressed differ-

ently in some rabbinic and medieval texts, which distinguish between

the Torah known in this world (encompassing both the written and the

oral Torah) and a Torah that exists in a world beyond. Thus Kohelet

Rabbah states baldly: "The Torah one learns in this world is emptiness

compared with the Torah of the Messiah" (1

1:12).Among the rabbis, the

belief was widespread that the Torah existed before the world (see, e.g.,

Midrash Tehillim 93:3; Bereshit Rabbah 1:4; b. Nedarim 39b) and that

God used the Torah as a blueprint in creation (m. Avot 3:18; Bereshit

5

See Yehezkel Kaufmann,

Toledot Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisra'elzt

(History of the religion of Is-

rael) (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Bialik & Devir, 1937-56), 2:477-78 (in Hebrew); and Israel

Knohl,

The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School

(Minneapolis: Fortress,

1995), pp . 148-52. T h e notio n of the "sanctu ary of silence" appe ars specifically in P texts,

not in H or D. Significantly, it is precisely in the P stra nd in E xodus 19 that we find a view

of revelation with out words or thu nd er, as Schwartz points ou t (in "Priestly Account" [n . 8

above], p. 125).

j

O n the tro pe of silence as "the sign not of an absence but , on th e contrary, of a Pres-

ence" in biblical texts, with reference to many other passages, see further Andre Neher,

The Exile ofthe Word, trans. David M aisel (Phila delphia : Jewish Publication Society, 1981),

pp . 9-128 (th e quota tion is from p. 10).

Com pare Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (n. 40 above), p. 30: "With his

da ring state me nt that t he actua l revelation to Israel consisted only of the aleph, Rabbi Men-

del transformed the revelation on Mount Sinai into a mystical revelation, pregnant with

infinite meaning, but without specific meaning. . . . In this light every statement on which

authority is grounded would become a human interpretation, however valid and exalted,

of something that transcends it."




Rabbah l:l).56Consequently, Heschel has shown, the question arose

among the rabbis: is the primordial, heavenly Torah identical to the writ-

ten Torah found on earth, or does the heavenly Torah exist solely in the

mind of

God?j7If the former, then the Torah as we know it was brought

down from heaven (a notion Heschel sums up with the phrase Torah min

hashamayim). If the latter, the Torah as we know it results from a transfor-

mation that brought the divinely cogitated Torah (Torah she-bashamayim)

into physical form; the earthly Torah is, in other words, an incarnation.

While some sages expressed the former view (see, e.g., Avot deRabbi Na-

than A:31 as well as Nachmanides' introduction to his commentary on

the Torah), others articulated the latter. Take the following passage: "You

[Moses] ascended on high, and you took spoils (shevi)' [Psalm 68.191. Gen-

erally in the world a person takes as spoils [physical things such as] silver

and gold and clothing. But is it possible to take as spoil what is in some-

one's mind (belibbo)? But you [Moses] have taken the Torah that was in

My mind; therefore i t is written [in Psalm 68.191, 'You took that which was

in

me

[reading shebbi rather than shevi]"' (Midrash Tanhuma, Tissa, 17).

Before Moses received the Torah, it had no form recognizable to a hu-

man. When Moses took it, he also conceived it as a phenomenon percep-

tible to humans; he interpreted it into its existence in this world. That

the primordial Torah has no earthly form is expressed also in a dictum

found in Midrash Tehillim (Buber) 90:12 and elsewhere, according to

which the primordial Torah is written in fire.js The comparison of Torah

to fire is suggestive: fire is real yet insubstantial, perceptible but not quite

physical, ever changing yet oddly constant. Further, this is no ordinary

fire since the Torah is written in black fire on white fire. By comparing the

heavenly Torah to something that does not exist on earth, the midrash

intimates that it is wholly different from anything known to humanity

and hence distinct from the Torah in Israel's hands.

An

analogous idea

appears in Jewish mysticism: the narratives and laws that comprise the

biblical text are outer garments that Torah wears. They are to Torah as

peoples' clothes are to their bodies (see, e.g., Zohar 3:152a [on Num.

9:1]).59Similarly, the Besht distinguished between "The Torah of God"

j See the discussions and many add itional sources in Abraham Joshua Heschel, Torah min

Ha-shumayzm (Lo nd on: Sonc ino, 1965; and New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1990),

2:8-12 (in Heb rew); an d in

E. E.

Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans.

I

Abra-

hamson (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), pp . 197-201 and notes. Th is notion has prerabbinic

roots. Heschel points out that Philo already distinguished between the written Torah we

know and the heavenly logos through which God created the world; see Heschel, Torah,

2:lO-11 an d n. 18 there .

i See Heschel, Torah, 2:3-32, esp. 10-1 1.

8 See the m any parallels listed in ibid., 2:22-23 an d 2:28, n. 12.

g A discussion of this widespread the m e an d its ramifications in various phases of Jewish

mysticism is well beyond the scope of this article. For further discussion, see Michael Fish-



Revelation at Sinai

and "the Torah of Moses." The former is "a hidden light" that few hu-

mans have attained, while the latter is the Torah revealed to Israel.60This

heavenly Torah, on which the verbal garments of the Pentateuch lie, is

analogous to the qol dimamah daqqah, the aleph of anokhi. In Kantian

terms: the only Torah we can know is a phenomenon, a product of human

perception and interpretation, but this Torah reflects a noumenon (in

both Kantian and Ottonian senses) that is at once real and unrealizable.

How, then, does the divine Torah relate to the earthly Torah or Penta-

teuch-which is to say, our Torah? In the manner suggested by Rosenz-

weig and Heschel and described at the outset of this article. Our To-

rah is an interpretation, a reflection, a deeply human-and often deeply

flawed-attempt at approximation. (Already among the rabbis one may

find an intimation that the written Torah is an imperfect work, but one

from which something of greater value can be derived through a tradi-

tion of interpretation and reflection. Tanna DeVei Eliyahu Zuta 2: 1states:

"When the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Torah to Israel, He gave it

only as wheat from which flour could be gotten, and as flax from which

clothing could be fashioned." Significantly, Heschel chose this quotation

as one of the preambles to the second volume of his study of revelation

in rabbinic literature, Torah in Ha-~hamayirn.)~~he divine presence in

bane, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 19 89), pp . 33-46; Gers hom Scholem, "Revelation a nd T radition as Religious Cate-

gories in Judaism," in his The Messianic Idea in Juda ism (New York: Schocken, 1971),

pp . 292-303; an d cf. the sources cited in Heschel, Torah, 2:32, nn. 31, 32. Note also the

analogous idea expressed in texts discussed by Wolfson ( n. 41 above), pp . 318-19 and

nn . 60-64. Th is them e developed fu rthe r after the Zohar. Magid shows that for many Luria-

nic kabbalists, the teachings that determine the true meaning (sic, without the plural) of

Torah preced e S inai; thu s "th e entire Revelation [at Sinai] was the symbolic encod ing of the

ancient esoteric tradition of

tikkun.

. . .

Many kabbalists

. . .

worked under the assumption

that th eir teaching preced ed t he Torah as we know it and believed tha t the Pentateuch was

its symbolic representation. W hen they tu rn to exegesis, their in tent is to desymbolize Scrip-

ture in o rde r to reveal its tru e nature . . . thus rende ring the garm ent as symbol, obsolete"

(Shaul

Magid, "Luria nic Exegesis and the G ard en of Eden,"

AJS Review

22 (1997 ): 62 (an d

cf. esp. 42). We see here an intimation of a radical devaluation of the Torah we know (i.e.,

the Torah that is the pro duc t of revelation).

Th is view is attr ibuted t o the Baal Shem Tov in M enachem Nachum of Chernoby l, Sefer

Me'or 'Einayim

(1798 ; rep rint , New Y ork: Twersky Brothers, 1952 ), begin ning of

Parashat

Huqqat

(pp. 104-5) and elsewhere. See related Hasidic and mystical texts cited in Shaul

Magid, "Modernity as Heresy,"

Jewish Studies Quarterly

4 (1997): 93, nn . 8 1, 82. As Magid

notes ( p. 94), the twentieth-century Hasidic leader R . Aaron (Areleh) Roth insists that any

possible apprehension of the inmost Torah is available only through faithful study of the

exoteric garment that is the Torah of Moses; without this faithful study of the garment,

the unity of Torah is destroyed. In adding this caveat to the Baal Shem Tov's dichotomy,

R.

Areleh seems to recognize the powerful-and, to him , dangerous-implications of the

notion tha t the Five Books reflect the divine Torah but d o not constitu te it.

6

Th is suggests the question, How does one identify the flour within the tradition? More

precisely: does the tradition itself offer criteria to separate its own essence from its own

accidents? O n this pressing issue, see the powerful essay of Moshe Green berg, "How Sho uld




the biblical text consists not of its words but in the silent

qol,

the aleph of

God's presence, that hovers beneath them and invites them into being;

the words are signposts pointing toward a transcendence that cannot be

apprehended, but they are not synonymous with or written by that tran-

s ~ e n d e n c e . ~ ~uch a view explains why the all-too-human documents we

know as the Pentateuch are indeed sacred even as it radically deflates

their claim to be ontologically ~ n i q u e . ~ V temoves the distinction be-

tween the Pentateuch and the rest of Jewish literature; Deuteronomy, like

Midrash Sifre and Rashi's commentary, like Yeshayahu Leibowitz's essays

and a worshiper's remarks made during a Torah discussion, is merely

one of many human interpretations. In breaking down the ontological

distinction between the Five Books and the rest of Jewish creativity, I

introduce what may be the most radical aspect of this article. I am as-

serting that all of Jewish tradition, including the Bible itself, is in a sense

Torah she-behlpeh: that is, tradition, commentary, and reflection. Even the

Five Books are tentative and groping rather than definitive. At the same

time, I should acknowledge that, within this tradition, there are clearly

different levels of authority and reliability. Some texts are read and stud-

ied more, some less; some comments are widely disseminated, some not

at all. On this practical level, the Five Books sense are clearly differenti-

ated from other texts.

The distinction between noumenal and phenomenal Torah suggests a

particular view of the revelatory moment, according to which all who

strain to hear the aleph of God's "I" by interpreting the Torah are at Sinai.

There is no "standing again at Sinai" since the articulation of an aleph

has neither beginning nor end, and thus the moment during which the

Jewish people stands at the foot of the mountain is an ongoing one. The

attempt of the Sinai myth to link revelation to a particular moment and

place is relevant to the phenomenal Torah (the Torah of Moses, in Besh-

tian terms) but surely not the noumenal one (the Torah of God), for the

noumenal Torah cannot be limited by rational categories of time and

space. What I suggest here is hardly new: already rabbinic tradition con-

tends that those who labor in the study of Torah can produce learning

that was not revealed to Moses at Sinai. Revelation, for the rabbis, contin-

One Interpret the Bible Today?" in his collection,

Hasegula We-Hakoah

(Haifa: Oranim,

1985),

pp.

49-67 (in Hebrew).

62

The congruence between this Rosenzweigian position and Menachem Mendel's dictum

on the aleph was noted already by Scholem (O n the Kabbalah and Its Symbolzsm, p. 30, n. 3).

63 I should note that my own conclusions here move somewhat further than those of

Rosenzweig and Heschel as

I

express my recognition not merely of scripture's human origin

but of its flawed and at times immoral nature.



Revelation at Sinai

ues to produce new echoes after Moses' time.64Moreover, for the rabbis,

even

before

Sinai, Abraham was able through intense study to know what

had not yet been r e ~ e a l e d . ~ ~caveat is necessary here, lest this point lead

to misunderstanding. No Jew can attempt to hear, or at least to interpret,

the aleph of anokhi by himself or herself. It is always through the medium

of tradition, through study of texts that are already revered, and thus

through community, that Jews react to God's presence. A purely individ-

ual reaction, no matter how deeply felt, is by definition not a Jewish one.

Is the sort of understanding of the status of scripture I sketch out here

so radical that it shatters the vessels it attempts to On the basis

of the history of interpretation of the Bible and

in

the Bible reviewed in

this essay,

I

suggest that it does not do so. The controversy in postbiblical

Jewish tradition concerning the extent to which Israel perceived Sinaitic

revelation reinscribes a dialogue that occurred among biblical authors

themselves. This inner-biblical debate is only slightly obscured by the

work of biblical redactors, and it is recovered by modern biblical criti-

c i sn~.~ 'he questions to which Rosenzweig and Heschel respond are

older than the redacted Book of Exodus, and their roots in the tradition

are as deep as Elijah: if the true revelation consisted of a qol divza?nah

daqqah, then what else can a written Torah or an oral Torah be other

than midrash? What is crucial for this point of view is that a real and

commanding presence indeed stood behind that qol; that through ~~ a r i e -

gated and ever changing traditions of learning and practice Jews re-

64

T hu s Fishbane comm ents: "In m any midrashic comm ents . . . the act of interpretation

was itself given theophanic proportions, insofar as the later-day interpreter was said to

stand at Sinai

in the course of his exegesis

(p. 38). Com pare Daniel Boyarin,

Intertextualitj and

the Readzng of Midrash

(Bloo min gton: Ind ian a University Press, 1990), p . 110, and see fur-

the r W olfson, pp. 317-19 and nn . 45-47.

6"ee, e. g. , the midrashi m cited in Heschel,

Torah,

23233. Of cou rse, not all anci ent inte r-

preters regarded the law as having been discernible before Sinai; on various attitudes to-

ward post-Sinaitic law prior to revelation, see Gary Anderson, "The Status of the Torah

before Sinai,"

Dead Sea Discoveries

1 (19 94) : 1-29.

6

This question is addressed in a different way in Lawrence Perlman,

Abraham He~chel's

Idea of Rer~elatzon

Atlanta: Scholars, 1989), pp . 119-33 an d implicitly throu gh out Heschel's

Torah,

especially vol. 2. Heschel endeavors in particular to show that what I call the steno-

graph ic m odel of revelation is not the only one curre nt in rabbinic and medieval Judaism

(see, e.g ., 2:146-56). My own atte m pt to answer this question differs in my assertion t hat

the attitude-better, temper-found in some m od ern thinker s such as Rosenzweig an d

Heschel can be trace d not only in rabbinic an d medieval literature bu t in biblical texts them -

selves.

On the congruence between preredacted biblical texts and postbiblical exegesis, see

also my essay, "Reflections on Moses: T h e R edaction of Nu mb ers 11 an d Its .2ftermath in

Post-biblical Exegesis,"

Journal of Biblical Literatu~e

in press).



The Journ al of Religion

spond, each generation in its own ways, to divine bidding; that these tra-

ditions attempt, however imperfectly, to imitate the primordial word of

God; that they struggle, however impossibly, to echo the sound that was

not a sound, the silent voice that imparts no content yet does command.

"Yet does commandn-the language of divine injunction is crucial

here. The responses of the Jewish people to revelation at Sinai, as pre-

sented in texts from the biblical period until the advent of the modern

era, have unanimously expressed themselves in terms of law. From the

consistency of these responses, we can learn that Jews understood the

God manifest at Sinai not merely as a presence but as a presence that

commands. Such a manifestation must be characterized as one that en-

joins even though we recognize that human beings fashioned (and fash-

ion) the specific mandates found in the Bible and later Jewish texts. It is

for this reason that the oldlnew view of revelation described here associ-

ates itself especially with the thoughts of Rosenzweig and Heschel, rather

than with Martin Buber's notion of revelation as presence and affirmation

free of both specific content and command.6s Israel fills in the object of

the verb in the sentence "God demands," but God remains the subject,

and the verb does not lose its basic sense of requirement and obedience.

O n Rosenzweig's insistence th at revelation involved a n act of comm anding (Gebot) bu t

no t specific laws (Gesetz), see his Star of Redemption ( n . 4 ab ove ), pp . 176-78, his ex ch an ge of

letters w ith B ub er ( re pr od uc ed in On Jewish Learning [n. 4 above], pp. 109-18), his letter to

the Frankfurt Lehrhaus (ibid., pp. 119-24), and his comment in a letter to M. Rosenheim

that "M ount Sinai in smoke and the ch ap ter of the thirteen mzddot are not e no ugh to teach

us what revelation is; they must be interwoven with the mishpatim [laws]" (in Martin Buber

an d Franz Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, tran s. L awren ce R osenwald w ith Everett

Fox [B loom ing ton : In di an a University Press, 19941, p. 23) . See also Stk pha n M osi.s, System

and Revelation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, tr an s. Cath eri ne Ti hany i (De troit : W ayne

State University Press, 1992 ), pp . 113-15; an d Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Law and Sacra me nt:

Ritual O bservan ce in Tw entie th Ce ntu ry Jewish Th ou gh t," in Jewish Spiritzuzlityfrom the Six-

teenth Centu rj to the Present, e d. A rth ur Gr een (New York: Crossroad s, 198 7), p p. 327-29.

Similarly, one must emphasize that the presence was a real one, even though the words of

the Torah are reflection of (or on) contact with tha t presence. H er e we recall Heschel's

insistence that revelation is filled with objective content although the words in biblical texts

were fashioned by the prophets who wrote them. On this theme in Heschel, see esp. Perl-

man's discussion and references, pp. 103-17. On the firm connection between revelation

an d com m and in H eschel, see Perlman , p. 177, n. 49. In spite of my rejection of Bu ber in

regard to the commanding force of God's revelation to the Jewish people, my attitude to-

ward biblical texts is in o ne resp ect closer to Buber's th an t o Rosenzweig's or Heschel's. Like

Buber, I a m ready to criticize biblical passages tha t are irreconcilable with the d em an ds of

a G od who is just andlo r m erciful; indeed, it is in large par t these passages (e.g ., Deu t. 3:6,

7:2, etc.) that lea d m e to the view of scripture I p rop oun d here. T h us the theology of revela-

tion I outline h ere generates a n un-Bube rian view of Juda ism , in which halachah must be

central; at the same time it elicits a method of reading and reacting to biblical texts that is

quite close to Buber. Incidentally, my insistence on going back behind the work of R to

recover a motley spectrum of ancient Israelite voices differs from both Buber and Rosen-

zweig. One may contrast my comments in the second paragraph of this essay with Rosen-

zweig's famous com me nt that biblical criticism's R (reda ctor) should be u nde rsto od by the

mo dern religious reader as Rabbeinu (Bu ber and Rosenzweig, p. 23).



Revelation at Sinai

What, then, makes the Jewish Bible sacred even though its words were

not dictated to Moses? What makes the laws binding even though they

were written by human beings and thus can be revised by human beings?

For one strand within Jewish tradition, it is the divine presence beneath

the text that endows Torah, in the narrowest and the broadest senses of

the term, with holiness. I n diverse ways over the generations, representa-

tives of this strand have interrogated the precise nature of this relation-

ship between divine voice and biblical text. The questions they ask can

be heard in one of Israel's earliest dialogues, that is, in the Bible's varied

accounts of what took place at Sinai.

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