Beha'alotkha (Rambam)

“And the Man Moses was Very Modest”

The closing chapter of this week’s parshah (Numbers 12) paints a picture of the uniqueness of Moses as prophet. Moses’ siblings, Aaron and Miriam, grumble to one another about the “Kushite woman” he had taken to wife, adding “has not God spoken with us as well?,” leading the midrash to see their complaint as directed against his choice of total celibacy and separation from normal marital life. Moses, being extraordinarily humble, does not protest this slander, but God takes the two of them to task, making a declaration about the uniqueness of Moses’ prophetic gift:

If you shall have a prophet, I shall make Myself known to him in visions, I shall speak to him in a dream. Not so my servant Moses, who is faithful in all my house. I speak to him mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles, and he shall see My image. Why then do you not fear to speak against My servant Moses? (vv. 6-8).

On the basis of this and other similar passages, Rambam develops the concept of the uniqueness of the figure of Moses. Indeed, it is a central pillar of his thought, the seventh of the Thirteen principles, and in several places he refers to the Torah as “the prophecy of Moses our Teacher.”

Moreover, in Maimonides’ accounts of the Sinaitic revelation, he greatly plays down the role of the 600,000 Israelites who stood at the mountain, stating that they only received a vague, general sense of God’s presence. The main purposes of this momentous event was to make clear to the people Moses’ authority as conduit and teacher of the Divine Torah. (I discussed this at length in HY I: Shavuot; in addition to the source brought below, see his Mishnah Commentary at Sanhedrin, Introduction to Perek Helek, §7; Guide II.33).

This theme is developed in Rambam’s discussion on prophecy. After presenting the concept of prophesy per se, and the qualifications and preparations required of the prophet in general (see Yesodei ha-Torah 7.1-5, and our discussion of these passages in HY V: Vayigash, Shemot), he goes on to enumerates four areas in which Moses differed from all other prophets. Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 7.6:

6. All the things of which we have spoken are regarding the manner of prophecy of all the prophets, former and latter, apart from Moses our Teacher, master of all the prophets. What is the difference between the prophecy of Moses and that of the other prophets?

All [other] prophets prophesy in a dream or a vision, while Moses our Teacher prophesies while he is awake and standing up, as is said, “And when Moses came to the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, and he heard the voice speaking to him” [Num 7:89].

All [other] prophets do so by means of an angel; hence they see what they see through parable and riddle. But Moses our Teacher did not see through an angel, as is said, “Mouth to mouth I speak to him” [Num 12:8]. And it says, “And the Lord spoke with Moses face to face” [Exod 33:11]. and it says, “and he saw the image of the Lord” [Num 12:8]. That is, without parable, but he sees the thing clearly, without any riddle or parable. Concerning this the Torah testified of him, “clearly and not in riddles” [ibid.]—that he does not prophesy by means of riddles, but in a vision through which he sees the thing clearly.

These first two are somewhat similar: the former relates to the state of consciousness of the prophet, while the latter to the actual contents of the prophetic message, but both revolve around the same idea: that the other prophets can only receive the prophetic influx in an indirect manner. Due to the inherent limitations of the human state and the capacity of the human mind, they cannot communicate with God without the mediacy of, on the one hand, unconsciousness and, on the other, it being “encoded” in symbolic language and imagery. Moses, on the other hand, received the message in a clear, direct way—suggesting that he himself was an utterly unique type of human being.

All [other] prophets are fearful and overwhelmed and faint, but Moses our teacher is not thus. As the verse says, “as a man speaks with his neighbor” [Exod 33:11]. That is, just as a person is not overwhelmed when he speaks with his friend, so did Moses have the strength of mind to comprehend the words of prophecy while standing at his place whole.

All [other] prophets cannot prophesy at any time they wish. Not so Moses our Teacher, but whenever he wishes he becomes enveloped in the Holy Spirit and prophecy dwelled upon him, and he need not direct his mind to prepare for it, for he is prepared and ready and stands waiting like the ministering angels. Therefore he prophesies at any time, as is said, “Stand and I will hear what the Lord will command you” [Num 9:8].

Perhaps the most apt comment here is the comparison of Moses to the ministering angels. This echoes a midrashic motif in which Moses is depicted ascending to Heaven at the time of Sinai and moving among the angels, who are shown as jealous and rather perturbed at what one “born of woman” is doing among them (see Shabbat 89a). In many other respects as well, Moses is a kind of intermediary between the worlds of the Divine and the human, conversing with God in an almost collegiate way about what they will do with the Jewish people at one or another juncture (see our discussion of this in HY III: Ki Tisa). Moses is thus almost a man become angel, and as such no longer part of the ordinary course of human life. This point leads to the final section of our halakha, which explains why he no longer lives with his wife—marital life and woman being used here as a symbol of earthly, corporeal life:

And concerning this God promised him, saying, “Go, tell them, return to your tents, and you, come and stand here with me” [Deut 5:27-28]. We thus learn that all the prophets, when prophecy departs from them, return to their tent—that is, to the needs of the body—like all the rest of the people. Therefore they do not withdraw from their wives, but Moses our teacher did not return to his first tent. Hence he separated from the wife forever, and from that which is like it, and his mind was connected to the Rock of Eternity, and the glory never departed him forever. And the skin of his face shone, and he was sanctified like the angels.

What is the theological importance of Moses’ uniqueness to Maimonides’ system? Unlike other points of faith, or what we might call “popular religious ideas,” regarding which Rambam at times takes what might be called a “minimalist” approach (e.g., miracles, particular Divine Providence, the Afterlife, Messiah, etc.), he is extremely insistent on the Mosaic origin of the Torah, because without the type of clear, direct prophecy described here, the Torah would not have the clear, undisputed authority it should have and needs to have. And since, given his conception of the extraordinary spiritual faculties needed to apprehend the Divine, the people could not have received the detailed legislation, or even all of the Ten Commandments, at Sinai, but only its most general ideas—i.e., the kingship and uniqueness of God, and the rejection of all idolatry. There was hence a need for Moses as the unquestioned authority and teacher —and indeed, as we shall in greater detail later, he wears two hats, so to speak, as prophet and as teacher.