This curious description relates to one of the main objectives of the Book of Exodus: to present Moses as Pharaoh’s equal. In that context, “horned” should be understood as having actual horns. I would like to travel further back in time, to the original setting of Exodus 34. Whereas earlier readers, including Jerome, who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, understood the phrase “the skin of his face was horned” in a positive light, perhaps even exhibiting the presence of God, with the passage of time, many later readers, especially Christians of the later Middle Ages, began to view the horns negatively, often with dire consequences for the Jews who lived within Christendom. Jefferson provided an excellent survey of how the horns of Moses (see Exodus 34:29–30, 35) were reinterpreted over the centuries. In the Spring 2023 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Lee M. Sculpture of Moses, from the 16th-century Fontana dell’Acqua Felice, in Rome.
