Commenting
on the attempt to downplay biblical anthropomorphisms in various Targums (e.g.,
Onqelos; Neofiti), Carmel McCarthy wrote the following about their downplaying
texts that speak of people seeing the “face” of God:
The face of
the Lord. The “seeing
of the face of God” was an expression which caused a certain amount of
theological problems and scruples for later generations. There are eight
passages in the Pentateuch (MT), which are presently vocalised as a type of niphal, “to be seen/appear before the
Lord”, but which read more smoothly if they were vocalised as qal, “to see the act of the Lord”. It is
not surprising to find that all eight passages in Tg. Onq., and seven in Tg.
Neof., are expressed reflexively, “to be seen/to appear before the Lord”. Tg. Onq. is very close to the MT for all
passage, whereas Tg. Neof. exhibits some
parenetic expansions, as for instance in Exod 23:17: “All your males shall be
seen seeking instruction before the
Lord of all ages, the Lord”, or in Exod 34:20: “And they shall not be seen before me empty of every precept”.
Elsewhere, “the face of the Lord” is rendered by both Tg. Neof. and Tg. Onq. as
“before the Lord”, whereas the
phrase, “and they saw the God of Israel” in Exod 24:10 is paraphrased in Tg. Neof. as: “and they saw the glory of the Shekinah of the Lord”,
and as: “And they saw the glory of the God
of Israel” in Tg. Onq. The Codex
Vaticanus and recension of Origen for the LXX tradition present an interesting
alternative paraphrase tied up with the continuation of v. 10: “And they saw the place in which the God of Israel had stood.” (Carmel McCarthy, "The
Treatment of Biblical Anthropomorphisms in Pentateuchal Targums" in Kevin
J. Cathcart and John F. Healey, eds. Back
to the Sources: Biblical and Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Dermot Ryan [Dublin: The Glendale
Press, 1989], 45-66, here, pp. 53-54, italics in original)