He exalted him and raised him high. He made him like an angel of God, a prince to them. He carried them.
— 4Q374, Fragment 2
4Q374 is a Cave 4 Hebrew manuscript belonging to a genre unique in the Dead Sea Scrolls: the midrashic homily. It is not a pesher, not a rule text, not a psalm. It thinks aloud about events already recorded in Scripture — the Exodus, the encounter at the mountain, Moses standing before Pharaoh — and asks what those events meant, what actually happened in the burning and the trembling and the departure from Egypt.
Eleven fragments survive. Fragment 2 is the most legible, with two columns partially preserved. The text speaks of Moses in language Torah itself does not use: he was exalted and raised high; he became like an angel of God; his face, when he returned to the people, they did not recognize; and terror of him fell upon Egypt. The composition draws on the tradition of Exodus 34:29–35 — where Moses descends Sinai with his face luminous from speaking with God — but presses it further: Moses is not merely radiant but transformed, elevated into the luminous territory the angels occupy. He is prince over them. God carried them through him.
This is a Qumran vision of Moses as not quite human in the moment of divine encounter. It belongs to the same theological current visible in the Apocryphon of Levi, where an eschatological priestly figure bears the weight of a whole generation, and in the Visions of Amram, where the dead patriarch is visited by angels who contend over which one he resembles. The boundary between patriarch and angel was a live question for the community, and Moses — the lawgiver, the face-to-face speaker — was their fullest test case.
Fragment 2, Column i
[Heavily damaged. Only isolated words survive. Reference to the spirit of God and to Moses is legible. No continuous translation is possible.]
[...] the spirit of God [...]
[...] Moses [...]
[...]
Fragment 2, Column ii
[The most complete surviving section. Eight lines, partially legible. No conjectural restorations have been inserted into the translation.]
[...] he revealed himself to him [...]
[...] he exalted him and raised him high [...]
[...] like an angel of God, a prince to them [...]
[...] he carried them [...]
[...] his face — they did not recognize him [...]
[...] for the terror of him fell upon them [...]
[...] and he spoke with him [...]
[...]
Note on the Fragments
Nine of the eleven fragments of 4Q374 are too damaged for coherent translation — they preserve isolated vocabulary: spirit, hand, land, people, covenant, word. The theological weight of the text rests almost entirely on Fragment 2, col. ii.
The phrase rendered like an angel of God, a prince to them draws on the Hebrew mal'akh elohim (messenger of God) and nasi (prince, leader, one who is elevated). In the Pentateuch, Moses is never called an angel. The Qumran text is going somewhere the Torah does not go — and it does so through the memory of the shining face, the terror, the carrying: three events the text strings together as a single motion of divine exaltation.
The phrase he carried them (yissa'em) recalls the language of the wilderness narrative: God carrying Israel through the desert as a parent carries a child (Deuteronomy 1:31). Here the text may be attributing that carrying not directly to God but to Moses as God's elevated instrument. The distinction is not clean, and probably is not meant to be.
Colophon
4Q374 (4QDiscourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition). Cave 4, Qumran. Hebrew. Eleven fragments, Herodian-period script. Preliminary publication: Carol Newsom, "A Discourse on the Exodus/Conquest Tradition," in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, ed. D. Dimant and U. Rappaport (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 40–52. Official DJD edition: Qumran Cave 4, XX: Poetical and Liturgical Texts, Part 2 (DJD XXIX; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999). Reference text: García Martínez and Tigchelaar, Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, vol. 2 (Brill, 1997–98), 744–45.
Translated from Hebrew. Fragment 2, col. ii is the anchor of the translation; the other fragments yield vocabulary only. Translation is limited to passages where the Hebrew yields continuous sense; no conjectural restorations have been introduced. The key phrases — exaltation (wayyarem wayyagbah), the angel-like description (ke-mal'akh elohim nasi lahem), the unrecognized face (panaw lo' hikkiruhu), and the terror-motif (ki napal paḥdo 'alehem) — are the most reliably attested elements of the text and form the spine of this translation.
Good Works Translation — New Tianmu Anglican Church, March 2026.
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Source Text
4Q374 — Hebrew
Cave 4, Qumran. Eleven fragments. Fragment 2 is the most complete. The full critical edition is in DJD XXIX (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999); the preliminary edition is Newsom (1992). The following presents the attested Hebrew vocabulary and partial lines from Fragment 2 with lacunae marked [...]. Conjectural readings that are editorial restorations rather than direct manuscript readings are not included here; the DJD edition should be consulted for the full critical apparatus.
Fragment 2, Column i
1. [ ]
2. [ ] רוח אלהים [ ]
3. [ ] משה [ ]
4. [ ]
Fragment 2, Column ii
1. [ ]
2. [ ] ויגלה [לו ]
3. [ ] וירם [ו]יגבה [ ]
4. [ ] כמלאך אלהים נשיא [להם ]
5. [ ] וישאם [ ]
6. [ ] פניו לא הכירוהו [ ]
7. [ ] כי נפל פחדו [עליהם ]
8. [ ] וידבר [עמו ]
Fragment 2, col. ii is consistently legible in its core vocabulary: the verb of exaltation (lines 3), the angel-prince description (line 4), the carrying (line 5), the unrecognized face (line 6), and the terror-fall (line 7). All surrounding context is lacunose. Remaining fragments (1, 3–11) preserve only isolated words and are not transcribed here. For the complete Hebrew transcription see DJD XXIX and García Martínez & Tigchelaar (1997–98).
Source Colophon
4Q374. Cave 4, Qumran. Hebrew. Eleven fragments. Published: Carol Newsom, DJD XXIX (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999). Fragment 2, col. ii is the primary text; all other fragments too damaged for coherent sense. Lacunae marked [...]. Source text follows the attested vocabulary from published editions; all reconstructed portions are marked as lacunose.
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