Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 20/05/2006 22:32, Oun Kwon wrote:
> ...
> Exo 34:33       And when Moses had finished speaking with them,
>                               he [had to] put a veil over his face.
>
> With expansion  [had to] added in the text, the narrative tells the
> story without confusion.
>
> While Moses was speaking with them, his face kept shining. Thus he had
> to put a veil for the sake of the people after finishing speech.  I
> think KJV overstepped and tried to understand (wrongly) the text to
> say Moses put a veil before beginning to speak.
>
>   
Oun, I must say I wondered for a moment if there was some contradiction 
between this verse and 2 Corinthians 3:13. Perhaps the KJV rendering is 
an attempt, perhaps unconscious, to harmonise Exodus with the New 
Testament verse, which at first seems to imply that Moses veiled his 
face when speaking to the Israelites, not afterwards. But a closer look 
at 2 Corinthians 3:13 in context makes it clear that the Israelites had 
the chance to see Moses' face unveiled but they could not fix their eyes 
on it (ATENISAI, v.7), also that what the veil hid was not in fact the 
Moses' shining face, but literally "the end of what was being 
destroyed". It is not quite clear to me what this means, but certainly 
one possibility is a reference to the fading away of the glory. Thus 2 
Corinthians agrees with Exodus, that Moses displayed his shining face 
for a while, but then covered it up - perhaps because he knew that the 
glory would fade away and didn't want others to see this happening.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/