Exodus 11:3 - On the noun אִישׁ

(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term אִישׁ, by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)

This verse has long been an interpretive crux. Although the NJPS rendering has not been altered here, it is nonetheless worthwhile to understand what is going on, because this usage recurs elsewhere.

Now, prior to the tenth plague, the narrator pauses to describe a marked turnaround in the circumstances that the Israelites find themselves in. This is described in two parts. In the first part of the verse, Yhwh is the (subject) topic; in this second part, the topic is Moses. In other words, there is a shift in topic—what the discourse analyst Stephen Levinsohn calls a “switch in attention.” (“Some Notes on the Information Structure and Discourse Features of Exodus 1-14,” 2012, citing Nahum Sarna: “An additional reason for the Egyptian people’s response,” Exodus: The JPS Torah Commentary, 1991.)

Here הָאִישׁ has a discourse function: it signals the shift in topic. It eases the transition by regarding Moses in terms of the situation that he has been involved in, which of course features Yhwh. The situation is being depicted schematically, and Moses is framed as another key player in that situation.

As usual, the label הָאִישׁ, being part of the vocabulary for sketching a situation, regards its referent as an essential participant in an established situation—cognitively anchoring them to that situation. This instance is thus a prototypical usage of אִישׁ. Meanwhile, as usual, הָאִישׁ says nothing new or relevant about the age or gender of its referent. (See further David E. S. Stein, “Explaining the Preference for הָאִישׁ as a Label,” paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, November 2024.)

Here הָאִישׁ is referentially superfluous, given that the name Moses alone would suffice to identify the party in question. Such a referring expression—headed by הָאִישׁ with the same referent’s name in apposition—is distinctive yet not unusual. The other instances are: Gen 19:9 (Lot); Num 12:3 (Moses); Judg 17:5 (Micah); 1 Sam 1:21 (Elkanah); 1 Kings 11:28 (Jeroboam); Esther 9:4 (Mordecai); and Dan 9:21 (Daniel). Cf. also the appositions in 1 Sam 25:25 (Nabal) and 2 Sam 3:15 (Paltiel). Similarly, in 1 Macc. 5:63, the extant Greek translation presumes that its source text included the expression האיש יהודה, namely: καὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ ᾿Ιούδας καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ ἐδοξάσθησαν σφόδρα ἐναντίον παντὸς ᾿Ισραὴλ “The man Judas and his brothers were greatly honored in all Israel…” [source, with NRSVue].

Interpreters tend to treat these cases on an ad-hoc basis rather than looking for an explanation that works for all of them. Many of them have been interpretive cruxes, in that scholars have differed as to the significance of הָאִישׁ.

The obvious need to account for the presence of הָאִישׁ here has prompted some scholars to ascribe to it a super-meaningfulness, by perceiving it to be an honorable epithet. They include the dictionaries of Simonis and Eichhorn (1793) and of Gesenius (1829), and the commentary of Arnold Ehrlich (Randglossen zur Hebräischen Bibel, vol. 1, 1908). More recently, Joüon glossed this expression as le seigneur Moïse ‘Lord Moses’, concluding that une nuance analogue à «seigneur» apparaît dans le cas où האיש précède le nom d’un personnage important, généralement dans un contexte élogieux ‘a nuance similar to lord appears in the case where הָאִישׁ precedes the name of an important person, usually in a laudatory context’ (“Notes de Lexicographie hébraïque,” Biblica 6, 1925:313).

One problem with this view is that it does not work when applied to the venal householder Micah in Judg 17:5, nor to the young upstart Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11:28.

A deeper problem is that it unnecessary. The situation-oriented construal provided above reflects a conventional usage of אִישׁ, and that fact is enough to guarantee its cognitive priority. Conventional meanings of a noun will take precedence over other possible meanings (except in unusual circumstances). Hence the sense of importance that Joüon and others have noticed is actually evoked not in the realm of semantics but rather of pragmatics. Like most instances of אִישׁ in the Bible, this one operates mainly on the level of discourse between a narrator/speaker and their audience, to improve the efficiency of communication about situations. As such, אִישׁ has little meaning on the semantic level. As noted, it is giving us no new information about the referent’s intrinsic qualities.

Another problematic approach is that of NRSVue, which ascribes a different kind of super-meaningfulness. Its rendering casts the referring expression הָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה, which comprises the grammatical subject, as also affecting the predication: “Moses himself was a man of great importance in the land of Egypt,” where himself…a man seems intended to represent the meaning contribution of הָאִישׁ. That is, אִישׁ is somehow indicating that Moses’ “great importance” (גָּדוֹל מְאֹד) is a quality that is essential for grasping the depicted situation (which is the function in English of the man of construction). If so, the translators seem to have confused this construction with the type in which אִישׁ is indeed part of the predication, such as 2 Kings 5:1,

וְנַעֲמָן שַׂר־צְבָ֨א מֶֽלֶךְ־אֲרָ֜ם הָיָ֣ה אִישׁ֩ גָּד֨וֹל לִפְנֵ֤י אֲדֹנָיו֙

In the present verse, by contrast, what is marked as essential is the presence of Moses, not the quality that is predicated about him. Therefore I do not find the NRSV rendering to be defensible.

I myself used to assert that in an apposition like הָאִישׁ מֹשֶׁה, the label הָאִישׁ regards its referent in terms of a status or role, positing the meaning of “agent” here and in several other instances. (That was the hypothesis of a 2018 SBL paper.) But again, such a specific semantic meaning would not actually be evoked in this context, because the prototypical situation-oriented meaning works so well.

Meanwhile, Amos Hakham (in Daat Miqra) glosses one interpretation of the noun phrase as משה כשלעצמו, כאיש פרטי “Moses himself, as an individual.” This explanation is incomplete; it does not address what such a notice contributes in this context, beyond simply the use of Moses’ name to identify him. Why would the narrator be pointing to his individuality here?

Some commentators do seem to have sensed that the label הָאִישׁ indicates an essential participant. Ibn Ezra and Nachmanides both wrote in effect that this way of mentioning Moses was alluding to the difference in the depicted situation that had been made by his involvement.

As for the translation, the NJPS rendering “Moses himself” has not been changed. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary offers one meaning of “himself” as “that identical one—used for emphasis in apposition” (as in “he himself informed me”)—thus making a point of Moses’ presence or involvement, which in turn makes him worthy of mention. The effect thus appears to be adequate to signal a topic shift via a situating orientation, as expressed in English idiom.

• For a list of my comments on the RJPS translation, see here.

• For a list of my comments on אִישׁ, see here.