God “Passed in Front of” Moses
This week’s Torah reading (for the Sabbath that falls during the festival of Sukkot) returns us to a familiar passage in the book of Exodus, chapter 34. There, God is said to have gone down to Mount Sinai to meet with Moses; “and He stood alongside him [Moses] there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: ‘The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and compassionate God, slow to anger and of abundant kindness and faithfulness, storing up [acts of] kindness for the thousands, forgiving wrongs and transgressions and sins and forgoing punishment” (Exod 34:6-7).
This list of God’s merciful characteristics (known in rabbinic parlance as the “13 traits”) is perhaps the most theologically explicit passage in the Torah. It says that the Creator is not—no matter how things may sometimes look—an altogether neutral deity, but rather that at the very heart of things, God has a predisposition to kindness and compassion. This is a central teaching of Judaism (and one that has been, for many Jewish thinkers, difficult to account for).
But quite apart from this matter, translators and commentators have always been troubled by the apparent anthropomorphisms preceding the “13 traits.” How can God be said to stand anywhere, alongside (or “with,” as some translations read) Moses or anyone else? Isn’t He infinite and omnipresent? Still more troubling, why is God then said to “pass in front of” of Moses—why, in those circumstances, should He need to “pass” anywhere, and for what purpose?
The targums (ancient translations of the Bible into Aramaic) resort to a slight emendation. God Himself did not “pass” in front of Moses; He caused his Shekhinah (a kind of earthly concentration of His being) to pass in front of Moses. (In grammatical terms, the targums are suggesting that we read the verb va-ya‘avor (“He passed”) as if it were to be pronounced va-ya‘aver, “He caused [His Shekhinah] to pass”). This may soften the anthropomorphism a bit, but it still doesn’t address the basic question: What’s really happening in these verses, and why?
Medieval commentators went on to propose various explanations, but perhaps the most radical reading is the one cited in the Babylonian Talmud (Rosh ha-Shanah 17b) in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan:
If it were not written so [in the Torah], no one would be able to say such a thing! This verse teaches that the Holy One wrapped Himself up like a prayer leader (sheliaḥ tsibbur) and taught Moses what to pray: He said to him, “Whenever Israel sins, let them say the following and I will forgive them: ‘The Lord, the Lord…’” (that is, the 13 traits listed in Exod 34:6-7).
Rabbi Yoḥanan’s explanation is that this passage reveals a particular procedure to be followed when people have sinned. They are to gather together, led by their prayer leader, and recite God’s 13 traits of mercy. If they do so, according to Rabbi Yoḥanan, God has promised to forgive them.
If you followed the traditional prayers for Yom Kippur last week, you may recall the Hebrew prayer that begins, “O God! You who taught us the 13 traits, account to our credit today the covenant of the 13 traits…” One might well ask what covenant this prayer is referring to. The answer is: precisely the covenant that Rabbi Yoḥanan has discovered in the Exodus passage quoted, God’s apparent promise to forgive those who assemble for prayer with a prayer leader and recite the 13 traits.
Well, it’s certainly nice to think there was such a divine promise; unfortunately, however, that passage in Exodus doesn’t say anything about assembling for prayer with a prayer leader! Or does it?
It all goes back to that verb va-ya‘avor (“He passed”). The expression “to pass in front of” had acquired a specialized meaning in the Hebrew of the Rabbis: when a prayer leader assumed his duties, he was said to “pass in front of the tevah [the chest in ancient synagogues holding the Torah],” that is, to go to the spot in front of the tevah from which he would then lead the prayers. Sometimes, in fact, the verb “to pass” was used alone as a kind of shorthand to mean “perform the duty of a prayer leader.”
So, when Rabbi Yoḥanan read this passage in Exodus, which reported that God had “passed in front of Moses,” it seemed that it could be saying that God Himself had “passed” in the rabbinic sense, actually wrapping Himself up as a prayer leader in order to show Moses the procedure to be followed.
To be sure, this is a fanciful reading of that verse in Exodus, but one with real-life consequences. Judaism does take seriously those 13 traits; people can repent of their misdeeds and turn to God for forgiveness. That is why the 13 traits are read not only on Yom Kippur, but whenever Jews ask for forgiveness; in fact, we read, and contemplate, this passage on happy occasions as well—including the Shabbat that falls in the festival of Sukkot.
Mo‘adim lesimḥah!
