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When he came out, he told the Israelites what he had been commanded. The Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was radiating light; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him. (Exod. 34:33–​35) This veiling further sets Moses apart. No longer able to wear his own face, neither can he display the radiant face of divine encounter in the midst of the Israelites. In the streaming light of Moses’ face, we thus have two forms of transformation: the divine glow of the prophet’s face, and the opacity of the covering he places over it.

It is likewise dispersed across the prophet’s body, emphasizing both specific body parts (hands, face) and a more general bodily condition. And so before theorizing Moses’ body as a whole I will consider the essential moments in his experience of embodiment. What follows is an account of the most important features of Moses’ prophetic body. ╇ 27 The Materiality of Moses 27 The Good Baby Moses’ body is special from birth. When he is born, his mother immediately observes that he is “good” (ṭôḇ):13 “The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was good, she hid him three months” (Exod.

Moses’ body likewise transmits affects, beginning with the terror his face engenders in whoever looks at him. Conceiving of the body as a queer assemblage also foregrounds the question of intensity. ”54 In this way the assemblage sets forth intensity an alternative to intersectionality, which models identity as constructed through intersecting vectors of class, race, gender, sexuality, and so forth. What intersectionality misses, however, is intensity. To describe Moses as male, Hebrew, and perhaps disabled or feminized is to offer a description that is at once accurate and insufficient.