Sunday School Bible Story
Good morning,
My plan for our combination Confirmation and Sunday School class this morning is to do a short Bible study on today's Old Testament reading, and on The Shema and its relationship to the traditional opening rite of our liturgy, then go into the BCP and topic Worship & Theology.
RSF&PTL
Tom
Exodus 3:1-15 Moses at the Burning Bush
3 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
13 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה
ehYEH ahSHER ehYEH“ - I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה ehYEH I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘ יְהוָ֞ה y’VAH The Lord, Adonai, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
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Moses with horns (pinched from online source)
Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses on display in Vincoli, Rome, in the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains, depicts Moses with two horns on his head. This horned portrayal of Moses by Michelangelo and by other artists in other works of art and literature stems from a passage in the book of Exodus.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the first set of stone tablets, he encountered the idolatry and immorality of the people. In rage Moses threw down the tablets, breaking them to pieces. After the people repented, God called Moses to climb Mount Sinai again, with new stone tablets to replace those he had broken: “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exodus 34:29, ESV). When the people saw Moses’ shining face, they were afraid to go near him (verse 30). So Moses covered his face with a veil (verse 33). There seems to be nothing in this passage to warrant the idea that Moses had horns, yet this is indeed where the idea comes from, because of a Latin translation.
The original Hebrew word used to describe the radiant skin of Moses’ face is qaran. A related word, qeren, means “horns,” as it refers to something that “projected outward” as horns do. However, the word qaran properly means “to shine” or “to send out rays.” The Hebrew wording used in Exodus 34 was meant to indicate that Moses’ face “sent forth rays of light” or “projected light.”
The Latin Vulgate translation by Jerome in the fourth century used the Latin word cornuta to describe Moses’ face. Cornuta, related to the word cornucopia (“horn of plenty”), means “horned.” Jerome, in saying that Moses was unaware that “his face had become horned,” was most likely expressing the fact that the skin of Moses’ face radiated with “strong horns of light.” But his wording led to overly literal interpretations by artists who assumed that Moses had actual horns protruding from his face when he descended Mount Sinai.
One English translation retains the “horns” wording in Exodus 34. The Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible translation of Exodus 34:29says, “When Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord” (emphasis added). The reason that Moses has “horns” in the Douay-Rheims Translation is that the DRT was translated directly from the Latin Vulgate and not from the original Bible languages.