Endnote 5 – Did Moses Have Horns?

This translation, with some modification is the interpretation of Mitchell Dahood, who takes the “horn” to be a type of lamp (Psalms III [Anchor Bible 17A; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970], p. 248). There are two difficulties with this translation however. First, the word rendered “shine” has that meaning only in Aramaic, while in Hebrew it elsewhere means “sprout.” Moreover, due to the lack of vowels in ancient Hebrew manuscripts, we could read niµr, “fiefdom,” instead of neµr, “flame” If, however, we do read “flame” (compare 2 Samuel 21:17, which calls David “Israel’s name”), then Dahood’s understanding of “horn” may indeed be correct, and such a usage could have generated a verb “shine.”