‘And Moses Hid His Face’: Isaac Abarbanel and Maimonides on the Nature of Prophecy
Eric Lawee

Eric Lawee is a full professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His *Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic* (2019), published by OUP, won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship of the Jewish Book Council (Judges’ Remarks below) and was finalist for a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award of the Association for Jewish Studies in 2021. He holds the Rabbi Asher Weiser Chair for Medieval Biblical Commentary Research and directs Bar-Ilan’s Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

Throughout his life, the great commentator on the Torah of the “generation of the expulsion,” Isaac Abarbanel, engaged in a searching, fruitful, and at times highly conflicted dialogue with Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), the medieval predecessor whom he most admired. Some elements of the Maimonidean legacy Abarbanel greatly esteemed but others he strongly rejected. One teaching of Maimonides on a fundamental issue that Abarbanel considered dangerously wrongheaded lay in the sphere of prophetology. Maimonides understood prophecy as a natural occurrence. On this view, anyone who fulfilled the necessary conditions for prophecy would prophesy. Concomitant with this approach was Maimonides’ notion that a prophet had to engage in “preparations,” moral and especially intellectual, to attain prophecy, which Maimonides viewed as the highest form of human perfection.[1]

In discussing the nature of prophecy, Maimonides outlines three positions. The first is the belief held by the vulgar (pagan as well as some simpler adherents of the Torah) that God can transform whomsoever God chooses into a prophet. On this view, prophecy is a miraculous phenomenon and an expression of the sovereign will of God. Since the prophet is chosen by God’s will without precondition, there is no need for “preparations” to become a prophet. By contrast, Maimonides claims that there is consensus between the philosophers and the Torah that prophecy is a natural phenomenon. Those who, over the course of their lifetimes, attained the requisite moral perfection and, above all, intellectual perfection, would necessarily achieve prophecy, as it was not contingent in any way on the volitional intervention of God. From this understanding, it followed that prophecy demands arduous preparation.[2]

In responding to this presentation of the matter in his commentary on The Guide of the Perplexed, Isaac Abarbanel departed from the role he assigned to himself exclusively as an expositor of Maimonides. Unable to hold back, he sharply criticized Maimonides’ positions on the subject:

I say that the first principle upon which the Rabbi built his “line of confusion and a plummet of emptiness” (cf. Isa. 34:11)—that is, that prophecy is a natural perfection that comes to one prepared for it […]—is false.” Prophecy is a miraculous occurrence, contends Abarbanel, “that comes directly from God.”[3]

Put otherwise, Abarbanel’s view aligns with that of “the multitude of ignorant individuals among those who believe in prophecy,” whom Maimonides dismissed with derision. Since, according to Abarbanel, prophecy is a supernatural occurrence, it does not require preparation on the part of its recipient, though it does require moral rectitude on the part of the prophet.[4]

While, however, vehemently rejecting Maimonides’ understanding of prophecy in his commentary on The Guide of the Perplexed, Abarbanel strikes a different note in his commentary on Exodus in the course of explaining a midrashic debate concerning Moses’ behavior at the burning bush: “And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exod 3:6). Abarbanel quotes a disagreement between R. Joshua ben Korḥah and R. Hoshaya:

One [R. Joshua ben Korhah] said: Moses did not act properly when he hid his face, for had he not hidden his face, the Holy One, blessed be He, would have revealed to him what is above and what is below, what was and what is to come. Later, Moses requested to see, as it is stated: “Show me, I pray, Your glory” (Exod 33:18). The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: “When I wished [to show you], you did not wish [to see]; now that you wish [to see], I do not wish [to show you],” as it is stated: “For no man shall see Me and live” (Exod. 33:20). And R. Hoshaya said: Moses acted properly when he hid his face. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: “I came to show you My face, and you honored Me by hiding your face. By your life, as a reward for this, you shall sit on the mountain for forty days and forty nights and enjoy the radiance of the Divine Presence,” as it is stated: “And Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone” (Exod. 34:29).[5]

At this point, in a pattern widely attested in his biblical commentaries, Abarbanel diverges from his task of engaging in running exposition of the Torah to offer a detailed interpretation of the midrash that he cites, stating: “It is fitting that we understand in what these sages disagreed and what the intention of each of them was.”

Beginning with Joshua ben Korḥah, Abarbanel explains the somewhat elusive dispute in terms of the debate over the nature of prophecy that so sharply divided him from Maimonides:

It seems that the dispute between these two perfect ones was about whether prophecy requires some sort of prior natural educational preparation or does not, it being from the divine will alone, [these two views being] in accordance with those opinions mentioned by the master and guide in chapter thirty-two of part two [of the Guide]. R. Joshua ben Korhah would then be saying that training is not a necessary precondition for [achieving[ prophecy since it is by the will of God that the prophet prophesies.[6]

Abarbanel attributes the opposing view to R. Hoshaya:

However, R. Hoshaya praised Moses for what he did, for he held the view that prophecy requires prior preparation in the prophet […] as the master and guide [Maimonides] wrote. Therefore, Moses, being at the beginning of his prophetic journey, hid his face because he was not yet prepared for the great perfection he would later attain.[7]

Bearing in mind the implacable opposition that Abarbanel expresses in his commentary on the Guide to the claim that prophecy is a natural occurrence requiring “preparations” (“line of confusion and a plummet of emptiness”), it is nothing short of astonishing that Abarbanel utters no criticism of this view when explicating the midrashic controversy over Moses’ conduct at the burning bush.[8] Indeed, by ascribing what he considers Maimonides’ wholly deviant view to one of the “perfect” sages, Abarbanel gives the naturalistic understanding of prophecy that he finds so repellent a grounding in classical Jewish tradition. The result of such forays into interpretation of rabbinic sayings is twofold: a midrash whose meaning is unclear is made to speak to profound issues of theology and, as noted, by engaging in such interpretations, Abarbanel will at times give a home in the Jewish tradition to a philosophically informed position of Rambam that he otherwise strongly contests.[9]

Notes:

This essay is based on an article that appeared in Daf Shvui (Bar-Ilan University), no. 1602: Parashat Shemot (18 January 2025): 1-2 (Hebrew).

[1] Many have analyzed Maimonides’ teaching on prophecy. For a comprehensive discussion, see Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht, 2001), 148–315.
[2] Guide of the Perplexed, 2:32 (in the Hebrew translation of Michael Schwarz [Tel Aviv, 2003], vol. I, pp. 373–376). Maimonides does claim a second-order distinction between the philosophic teaching and that of the Torah, stating that according to the latter even one who has completed all the necessary preparations for prophecy might yet not attain prophecy due to divine intervention that prevents that person from prophesying. Most classical commentators on the Guide—Joseph Ibn Kaspi, Moses Narboni, Isaac ben Moses Halevi (Profeyt Duran / “Efodi”), and Shem Tov ben Joseph—argue that Maimonides’ esoteric opinion on the matter aligns with the philosophers. In contrast, Abarbanel claims that Maimonides’ view is the one he casts as “the opinion of our Torah.” See David Ben Zazon, Nevukhim hem: masa‘ be-be’uro shel don Yiṣḥaq ’Abravanel le-‘moreh ha-nevukhim’ (Jerusalem, 2015), 215–217; Kreisel, Prophecy, 227–229.
[3] Moreh nevukhim le-ha-rav Moshe ben Maimon… be-ha‘ataqat ha-rav Shemu’el ibn Tibbon ‘im ’arba‘ah perushim (1872; photo offset Jerusalem, 1961), part II, chapter 32, 69r.
[4] See Alvin J. Reines, Maimonides and Abrabanel on Prophecy (Cincinnati, 1970), lxxiv.
[5] Isaac Abarbanel, Perush ‘al ha-torah, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1964), Shemot, 28. See Shemot Rabbah 3:1.
[6] Perush ‘al ha-torah, Shemot, 28. On Abarbanel’s tendency to interpret midrashim in his biblical commentaries, see Eric Lawee, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (Albany, 2001), 119–122.
[7] Perush ‘al ha-torah, Shemot, 29.
[8] This even-handedness may partially reflect Abarbanel’s dilution of Maimonides’ teaching: he ascribes to R. Hoshaya a weak version of the insistence that prophecy has preconditions that plays down the need for “preparations” of a specifically philosophic sort.
[9] For another example in which Abarbanel, in effect, projects a medieval controversy involving him and Maimonides onto a midrashic screen in a way that finds a home in classical tradition for a view of Maimonides that he rejects, see his interpretation of the maxims in the second chapter of tractate Avot, which he presents as a running dispute between sages over the crucial question of the path that leads a person to perfection. In particular, Abarbanel asserts that the issue at bar is whether Judaism’s approach to this question is enhanced by incorporating elements of philosophical ethics. See Perush ’Abarbanel ‘al mesekhta de-’avot (= Naḥalat -’avot), ed. Aron Golan (Ashkelon, 2012), 62–107.