Texts in Conversation
The meeting tent in Numbers 12 shares El's dwelling in the Baal Cycle as a place to approach a god, giving the dispute over Moses' authority a setting drawn from older ideas of divine presence.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
KTU 1.3 V:7
Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Ancient Near East
“I shall trample him like a lamb to the ground; I shall make his gray hair run with blood, the gray hair of his beard with gore, if he does not give a house to Baal like the gods, and a dwelling like the sons of Athirat!” She stamped her feet, and the earth shook. Then she set her face towards El at the source of the rivers, amidst the springs of the two deeps. She rolled back the tent of El, and came to the pavilion of the King, the Father of the Bright One. She came to the territory, the tent of the creator. Bull El her father heard her voice. El replied from within the seven chambers, through the eight façades of the closed rooms: […] Above […] “At the feet of the divine assistants I fall: I am much afraid!
Numbers 12:5
Hebrew Bible
4 The Lord spoke immediately to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam: “The three of you come to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them went. 5 And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent; he then called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. 6 The Lord said, “Hear now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision; I will speak with him in a dream. 7 My servant Moses is not like this; he is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I will speak face to face, openly and not in riddles, and he will see the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
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Notes and References
“... Moreover, the description of Yahweh’s
dwelling-place as a “tent” (’o¯hel) (e.g., Psalms 15:1; 27:6; 91:10; 132:3), called in
the Pentateuchal traditions the “tent of meeting” (’ohel moˆ‘e¯d) (Exodus 33:7–11;
Numbers 12:5, 10; Deuteronomy 31:14, 15), recalls the tent of El. The tabernacle
of Yahweh has qeˇra¯sˇıˆm, usually understood as “boards” (Exodus 26–40); Numbers
3:36; 4:31), whereas the dwelling of El is called qrsˇ, perhaps “tabernacle” or “pa-
vilion” (CAT 1.2 III 5; 1.3 V 8; 1.4 IV 24; 1.17 V 49). ...”
Smith, Mark S.
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts
(p. 142) Oxford University Press, 2001
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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