Face to Face the Eternal Spoke to His Friend
Model of the Tabernacle, the Mishkan, Israel.
In the Book of Numbers, there is a phrase that seemingly is easy to understand, when we look only at what has been revealed to us in the narration. But the Hebrew text tries to tell us something beyond what is immediately obvious. In such a case, we need to resort to the writings of the Rabbis to make better sense of the whole episode. It is, therefore, the object of this work to explain the Hebrew text of Numbers 7 and to interpret its literal translation. This matter can best be understood in connection with Exodus 7, as this will be further explained in the interpretation of the verses.
After the seven days of consecration of the priests, and on that day, the eighth day he erected the Tabernacle. This teaches that for seven days Mosheh was erecting it, on the day Moses had finished setting up the Tabernacle. Mosheh finished the setting of the Tabernacle after the blessing of the kohanim blessed Israel. And the Eternal spoke to Mosheh to teach them how to bless the children of Israel,
“The Eternal bless you and guard you.
the Eternal make His face shine upon you and show favor to you.
the Eternal lift up His face upon you and give you peace.”
Thus, they shall put My Name on the children of Israel, and I Myself shall bless them. (Num 6:22-27)
“Speak to Aharon and his sons” teaches that not only the High Priest bestows blessings on the people but also the ordinary priest. They are to be in a standing position when conferring these blessings. This is spelled out clearly in Deu 27:12. “So, you shall bless the children of Israel” (Num 6:23) means the blessing should be recited with the Name, not with a substitution, for the verse explicitly states: “Thus they shall put My Name” (Num 6:27), which means “My name that is unique to Me”. “And I will bless them” means that He will bless the Israelites in response to the priests invoking this blessing. The priests are never to take credit for having blessed the people, as the blessing stems from the Lord whose servants they are.
Even though the Kohanim were the ones who were to invoke the Name of the Infinite One to bless the people, the blessing itself comes from the Eternal, not from them. The recitation of the Priestly Blessing teaches that it is a constant reminder that all blessings come from Him. Thus, the Eternal commanded Aharon and his sons to do so throughout the generations, and He explained what the blessing was with which they are to bless them. He mentioned this blessing in connection with the setting up of the Tabernacle.
On the day that Aharon and his sons lifted up their hands toward the people and blessed them, the erection of the Tabernacle was finished and dedication of it began. The leaders of Israel brought six wagons of their own accord, bearing their offerings, and twelve oxen drawing the wagons before the Tabernacle. All the leaders brought the same gifts to Mosheh. The order, in which the twelve princes made their procession, corresponded to the order of the tribes in the camp (See Numbers 2), the leader of Yehudah first, and the leader of Naphtali coming last, as this was how the events unfolded.
“The Torah is a meeting with the Eternal in revelation”. Navah
And when Mosheh went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the ark-cover that was on the Ark of the Testimony, from between the two keruvim. Thus, He spoke to him. (Num 7:89)
We are told here that the Voice of the Lord was manifested over the Ark of the Testimony, and He spoke to Mosheh from between the keruvim. These words would demonstrate the enormous stature of Mosheh compared to all other prophets after him.
Thus, YHVH spoke to Mosheh face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. (Exo 33:11)
Inside the Tabernacle, where Mosheh engaged freely in conversation with the Eternal, the Eternal spoke to His friend face to face. Mosheh then returned to the people to teach them what He had taught him. We are not given to know in what peculiar form of manifestation the Eternal showed Himself to Mosheh, but one is sure, He never appeared in His essential glory, for no man can see Him and live, but only in such a way that human could bear. This is why the Torah tells us that there has never been any one equal to Mosheh, who had reached such dignity.
And the Torah goes on to state that Mosheh heard “the Voice speaking to him”; the Voice with the definite article. This testifies that the voice Mosheh heard was the well-known voice all Israel heard, namely that thunderous voice with which the Eternal spoke to Israel on Sinai.
What stands out, however, in Numbers 7:89 is not the fact that the Eternal spoke to Mosheh, for there is nothing new about it, but the use of the rare verb form, which appears in the verse to clarify the nature of that speech, as we will explain below. Note that the word “speak” appears twice in the verse quoted, and we need to understand the reason. Torah wants to impress upon the reader the rare verb form מִדַּבֵּר middabber which Torah chose to describe YHVH’s speech. The root of middabber, is דָּבַר davar, “to speak” and this root verb can be found everywhere in the Tanach. Notice that the consonants of מִדַּבֵּר middabber are the same as medabber, “speaking”. Middabber, however, shows up only thrice more in the Hebrew Scripture: in Eze 2:2, Eze 43:6, and 2Sa 14:13. We must try to understand why the Torah uses this rare grammatical form exactly here.
Grammar insight: Unlike most other languages, which are based on conventions, the Hebrew words are all based on a root that contains three letters. Variations of this root produce words with different meanings. When a word has been used in only one place, it is difficult to derive its meaning from a single use of it, as opposed to when a word is used in many different contexts. Hence the difference of opinion concerning its meaning. The use of dictionaries does not help much, since we would face the same problem. In such a case, its rendering is pure speculation and a matter of personal opinion. We now return to the text.
This rare grammatical form of middabber has several distinct meanings Numbers 7:89 may convey. While there are various interpretations to the verse, the reader must be cautious that while it is important to be aware of what the Torah really means, the simple explanation of the words is primary to our understanding:
(1) Middabber can describe a reciprocal action between two parties, i.e. conversation. In this case, YHVH speaks to Mosheh, and Mosheh speaks to YHVH.
(2) an ongoing action, i.e., YHVH was “continuously speaking” to Mosheh. But common sense does not allow us to say that He was speaking without ceasing in the Tabernacle.
(3) a reflexive meaning, i.e., it describes an action to oneself. In our case, it is the voice itself that was doing the speaking, it was not someone else “behind” the voice. This form is grammatically admissible. The grammatical construction of מִדַּבֵּר middabber is known as the hit-verb form מתדבר mitdabber. The tav infix in mitdabber assimilates into a double דַּ dalet that immediately follows it, noted by the dot מִדַּבֵּר inside the dalet. In other words, middabber is short for mitdabber with the tav “swallowed”. All the Hebrew grammarians say that the word middabber (speaking) in “speaking to him” is a reflexive form.
In his commentary to the verse, however, Ibn Ezra, a grammarian himself, holds a different approach to the verse. He says that in his opinion middabber is an infinitive. It is similar to the word dabber (speak). The mem in this case prefixed to middabber is in place of the word min, which means “from”. Hence Ibn Ezra renders the phrase va-yishma et ha-kol middabber elav, “and he heard the voice speaking to him” as, “and he heard the voice of the One who spoke to him) The meaning of va-yishma, “and he heard” is that only Mosheh heard the voice, and no one else. Anyone outside of the Tabernacle did not hear the Voice. This suggests intimacy that negates the distance between the Infinite One and mortals. In other words, what Ibn Ezra suggests is that “the Eternal made Mosheh’s ear supersensitive”. There is an allusion to this in other places which Ibn Ezra uses to support his view quoting 2Ki 6:17 wherein the prophet Elisha prayed to the Eternal to open the eyes of the young man, and Num 22:31, when He opened the eyes of Bil’am to see the messenger. Ibn Ezra concludes that this was the way the Eternal’s word always came to Mosheh.
By choosing this rare verb form to explain what took place when YHVH communicated with Moses in the Tent, Torah suggests that this communication was not a simple speech humans speak. The Voice is not a voice speaking in any normal sense of the word. This means YHVH does not literally speak, and whenever the Torah refers to Him as “speaking”, it means something much more complex than human speech that involves the sound waves as humans speak. If this is the meaning of our verse, then what the Voice was speaking was not speech at all but a form of communication that does not involve literal pronunciation of words found in the Torah but a “language” that translated the Eternal’s message into human terms Mosheh could understand.
Our take on the verse is as follows. The first approach (1), i.e., a reciprocal action, conversation, between YHVH and Mosheh is most natural to accept, even though the verse plainly says that it was [only] YHVH “speaking to him”. (2) YHVH was “continuously speaking” to Mosheh cannot be supported, for it is against the common sense. And (3) that YHVH speaking to Himself contradicts the phrase “speaking to him”, i.e., to Mosheh.
Therefore, the conclusion that follows is that of Ibn Ezra, who holds that middabber is not the same as mitdabber (speak to oneself), and the phrase ha-kol middabber elav, means the voice speaking to Mosheh, and the seemingly unnecessary “he heard” comes only to emphasize that only Mosheh was hearing the words of the Eternal, as Ibn Ezra explained. And this is our understanding of what the verse conveys, for the verse and the chapter ends with: “Thus, he spoke to him”, face to face the Eternal spoke to His friend.
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