Weekly Torah portion: Naso
“And when Moses came into the Tent of Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the voice being spoken to him from above the covering that is over the Ark of the Covenant, from behind the two cherubim, and He would speak to him” (Numbers 7:89).
While we would expect the verse to say that “he would hear the voice speaking to him (medaber eilav),” (as in Deut 4:33: “Has a people heard God’s voice speaking from the midst of the fire, as you yourself have heard?”), instead the verse says “he would hear the voice being spoken to him (middaber elav).” Some commentators, like Ibn Ezra, try to show that there is nothing special in this unusual verb (and see, for example, Exodus 34:33: “And when Moses came before the Lord to speak (middaber) with Him…”), but others hint at some theological significance. Thus, Onkelos translates the term middaber into Aramaic as mitmaleil, employing the reflexive form. Similarly, Rashi explains:
As being spoken unto Itself. It is respectful to the One above to speak thusly. He was speaking to Himself, and Moses was listening in.
We would seem to have a picture here of God speaking to Himself, and the prophet – Moses – listening in to God’s internal conversation. Or perhaps, as Prof. Robert Alter explains in the commentary to his new Bible translation:
The second linguistic anomaly of this verse is the use of the reflexive from of the verb, midaber (instead of the usual medaber, “speaking”)…It is also possible that the meaning is genuinely reflexive: “the voice speaking itself.” There seems to be a theological impulse here to interpose some kind of mediation between the divine source of the speech and the audible voice that is spoken to Moses (Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary).
In his book The Prophets, Prof. Abraham Joshua Heschel provides another insight into the prophetic process. He explains that “(t)he prophet is a person, not a microphone.” When a prophet hears the word of God, he does not hear words that he then transcribes like a stenographer, but rather “He speaks from the perspective of God as perceived from the perspective of his own situation.”
- Can we assume that God’s internal dialogue is expressed in words? If not, what do the commentators mean when they explain that the verb midabeir is reflexive and that “God was speaking to Himself”?
- What does the prophet hear? Do God’s words reverberate in the prophet’s ears or does the prophet hear God’s voice in his heart?
- Why does only the prophet hear God’s voice? Is it due to the special nature of God’s voice, are God’s words directed only to the prophet, or is the prophet specially attuned to God?
Iyunei Shabbat is published weekly by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, The Masorti Movement and The Rabbinical Assembly of Israel in conjunction with the Masorti Movement in Israel and Masorti Olami-World Council of Conservative Synagogues.
Chief Editor: Rabbi Avinoam Sharon
