eshdat, Deuteronomy 33:2
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Deuteronomy 33 contains the Blessing of Moses, a description a situation of the twelve tribes at a date well after Moses, presented as a prophecy in Deuteronomy. We don’t know who wrote, or who put it into the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy presents it (33:1) as something Moses said immediately before his death and the conquest of Canaan.

33:2 is its first verse:

Yahweh came up from Sinai, 
and dawned on him from Seir;
he shone from Mount Paran;
he came with ten thousands of his holy ones
at his right hand eshdat for him

If you’re struggling with the verse, it might help that “on him” refers to Israel. Instead of at his right hand, you might read from his right hand or with his right hand. Let’s leave aside, for today, the question of just what it means that Yahweh came from Sinai, Seir, and Mount Paran.   I’m concerned about what ʾšdt means.

Unfortunately, there’s only one ʾšdt in the Bible. The traditional Masoretic interpretation is to read ʾšdt as two words, ʾeš dat, “fire of law.” One problem with this is that it’s not quite what a “fire of law” would be. Another problem is that the word dat, “law” is too late for when scholars think this passage was written.[1]

There’s been all sorts of efforts to either find a meaning for eshdat, or else to guess what the text might have originally read, on the theory that eshdat is a mistake. You can read the article by Lewis if you want to know about some of these options.

But even if one of these guesses has it right, how would we know? We can’t. There’s not enough evidence to settle the question.


  1. LEWIS, T. (2013). Divine Fire in Deuteronomy 33:2. Journal of Biblical Literature, 132(4), 794. doi:10.2307/42912467.↩︎