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“His face had become radiant”

Exodus 34:29
Foreign wordSettledNarrator
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD. (Exodus 34:29 BSB)
* Hebrew: qaran, 'to send out rays,' but it shares a root with 'horn'; the Latin Vulgate read it as 'horned,' which is why Michelangelo's Moses has horns.

What it sounds like today

Moses comes down glowing after meeting God, a nice visual detail.

The cultural key

The verb qaran means to shine or send out rays, but it is built on the same consonants as keren, 'horn.' Jerome's Latin Vulgate chose the wrong sense and rendered it 'horned' (cornuta), and for centuries Western art followed, most famously Michelangelo's horned statue of Moses. The plain meaning is that lingering in God's presence left Moses physically luminous, so bright he had to veil his face, a glory Paul later contrasts with the greater, unfading glory of the new covenant.

Recovered meaning

Proximity to God left a visible afterglow on Moses' face, radiance borrowed from the One he had been speaking with. A single mistranslation of that shining gave the Western world its enduring image of a horned Moses.

Parallels: 2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:13
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