Qere Ketiv
And it came about, as soon as Moses approached the camp, that he saw the calf and the people dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. Exodus 32:19 NASB
Hands – Exodus 32:15, a few verses earlier, reads, “Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand,. . .” But four verses later, when he sees the reveling of the people, the text says that the tablets were in his hands, plural. Rabbinic tradition asks why Moses is able to carry both tablets in one hand when he starts down the mountain, but needs two hands to throw the tablets away? The answer is revealing.
The problem is that the text of Exodus 32:19 reads precisely the same way as the text of 32:15. Both occasions are singular (“hand”). But traditionally the second verse is read as plural, and since the rabbinic claim is that the tradition was handed down since Moses, there must be an explanation why the written text differs from the way the text is read. This traditional substitution happens in more than a few places. It’s called qere ketiv.
Qere and Ketiv, from the Aramaic qere or q’re, קְרֵי (“[what is] read”) and ketiv, or ketib, kethib, kethibh, kethiv, כְּתִיב (“[what is] written”), also known as “keri uchesiv” or “keri uchetiv,” refers to a system for marking differences between what is written in the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, as preserved by scribal tradition, and what is read. In such situations, the Qere is the technical orthographic device used to indicate the pronunciation of the words in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew language scriptures (Tanakh), while the Ketiv indicates their written form, as inherited from tradition.[1]
The rabbinic explanation for the change in Exodus 32:19 is ingenious. When Moses first descended the mountain, the tablets were so holy that they actually carried themselves. Consequently, Moses needed but a single hand to guide them. But as he approached the populace and found them engaged in sin, the holiness of the tablets began to evaporate and they grew heavier and heavier until Moses needed both hands to hold them. Et voilà, problem solved. Another miracle at Sinai.
Do you find this a bit fanciful? I do, until I realized that it is merely a paradigmatic extension of the basic orientation of rabbinic tradition. If the oral law is just as sacred as the written law, and just as divinely inspired without error, then any conflict between the two must be theologically resolved. Qere ketiv is one way to do this. The real issue isn’t the alteration of the text. The real issue is a commitment to inerrancy in both. Frankly, it’s no different than the Christian doctrine of plenary inspiration, and we shouldn’t be surprised to find it in rabbinic Judaism. When our paradigm begins with theological assumptions about the text rather than documentary evidence from the text, we’re going to need very creative explanations to maintain the doctrine, and, apparently, religious men are quite capable of such inventions.
Topical Index: hand, Moses, tablets, holy, Exodus 32:15, Exodus 32:19
