Moses at war

Michael Holmes holmic at bethel.edu
Wed Mar 1 09:13:53 EST 2000


Re Bart's question,
For hOPLON, BAGD suggests (on the basis of several classical references)
"shield"; Moses made a pile of shields to stand on so he could be seen when
he stretched out his hands. Seems to make sense both in terms of usage and
context; at any rate, so far the best explanation I've run across.

Mike Holmes
Bethel College

At 08:31 AM 3/1/00 -0500, you wrote:
>   Barnabas 12 provides a kind of midrashic exposition of Exodus 17:8ff,
>where Moses makes Israel prevail in war over the Amalekites by raising his
>hands over the battle.  Barnabas sees this as a "type" of the cross
>(evidently because of the positioning of the arms).  But what to do with
>his explanation of the event:
>
>TIQHSIN OUN MWUSHS hEN EF' hEN hOPLON EN MESWi THS PUGMHS, KAI STAQEIS
>hUPSHLOTEROS PANTWN EKSETEINEN TAS XEIRAS, KAI hOUTWS PALIN ENIKA hO
>ISRAHL.
>
>   The final two clauses are no real problem:  "and standing high above
>all the people he stretched out his hands; and so Israel again gained the
>victory."  But what's with the first one?  Is it saying that Moses stacked
>up some weapons in the midst of the hand to hand combat (= And so Moses
>stacked weapons one on the other in the midst of the battlefield)?  Or
>that he put weapons in his fists before raising his arms (= "And so Moses
>place a weapon in each fist, one at a time").
>
>   More specifically, I'm asking whether the second rendering strikes you
>as possible.  (The first has problems with PUGMH; and it's hard to figure
>out how it relates to the context -- why that is he would be stacking
>weapons; but I think it's the more normal rendering).  Again, I'm not
>asking about an interpretation of the Hebrew text of Exodus, but about the
>translation of Barnabas.
>
>-- Bart D. Ehrman
>   University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
>
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