Moses's Offer to Be Blotted Out and Paul's Wish to Be Accursed
Old Testament: Exodus 32:11-14, 31-32
... This people hath sinned a heinous sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold: either forgive them this trespass, Or if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written.
Old Testament, also: Exodus 34:29-35
And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord... he put a veil upon his face. But when he went in to the Lord, and spoke with him, he took it away until he came forth.
New Testament: Romans 9:1-3; 2 Corinthians 3:7-8, 13, 18
I have great sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh... Now if the ministration of death, engraven with letters upon stones, was glorious; so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which is made void... And not as Moses put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel might not steadfastly look on the face of that which is made void... But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The connection
Moses doesn't just plead with God on the people's behalf; when pleading alone isn't enough, he puts his own place with God on the table as the price, "strike me out of the book that thou hast written" rather than let Israel be destroyed. Paul does the same thing centuries later for the same people, in an offer of the same kind, wishing himself "anathema from Christ" for the sake of his kinsmen. Neither offer could actually be accepted; blotting out the intercessor doesn't save the interceded-for. But both men make it anyway, because the love driving the plea outruns what the plea itself could ever accomplish. Moses's intercession doesn't end with God simply relenting; it ends with a visible confirming sign, exactly like the rainbow after Noe's household or the blood on Israel's doorposts. When the covenant is renewed on the mountain, Moses comes down with his face itself changed, radiant enough that Israel is afraid to come near, radiant enough that he has to veil it just to speak with them. The sign of a successful intercession is written on the intercessor's own face. Paul picks up both halves of this story in two different letters. In Romans he echoes Moses's offer closely in substance. In Corinthians he returns to the veil itself, and does not let it stand as simple glory: Moses's face shone, but the shining faded, which is exactly why it needed covering, "for the glory of his countenance, which is made void" (3:7).
Moral sense
Chrysostom reads both offers as finally aimed past the people they name, at God's own glory, not Moses's or Paul's: each is afraid that Israel's ruin would look like God's promise failing, and offers himself to prevent that failure from being seen at all. Intercession at its most serious isn't really about the intercessor's own generosity; it's jealousy for God's own name being kept good.
Anagogical sense
What neither Moses nor Paul could accomplish by self-offering, Christ accomplishes permanently and without needing to be blotted out at all: "he is able also to save for ever them that come to God by him; always living to make intercession for us" (Hebrews 7:25, CCC 2634). And what covered Moses's face because it was fading, the new covenant lets stand fully open, because it does not fade: "we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18). No veil is needed for a glory that only grows.
The Fathers
Chrysostom, Homily 16 on Romans: "For as Moses seemed to be pleading for the Jews, yet was doing everything for God's glory... so also does Paul." St Jerome, Letter 128, to Gaudentius, joins the two himself: who now, he asks, is able "to say with the apostle, 'I could wish that I myself were accursed for my brethren'"? Moses prayed "blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book", and Jerome says of him: "He is not satisfied to secure his own salvation, he desires to perish with those that perish."
Warrant
The parallel between Exodus 32:32 and Romans 9:3 is an echo rather than a citation: Paul does not say he is doing what Moses did, and the vocabulary differs, anathema against being blotted from the book. The badge is patristic for that reason. Paul does, however, quote this same passage of Exodus and name Moses twelve verses later, at Romans 9:15 citing Exodus 33:19, so the chapter has the scene in front of it. The claim that "the sign of a successful intercession is written on the intercessor's own face" is my own synthesis, not any Father's argument. Checked in the Greek: kalymma, the veil, is the same noun at Exodus 34:33 and 34:35 in the Septuagint and at 2 Corinthians 3:13, with prosopon, face, shared across Exodus 34:29-30 and 2 Corinthians 3:7, so Paul is handling the Exodus scene in its own words. Checked in the Greek, and it connects this entry to Lot's household. Moses's plea at Exodus 32:13 opens mnestheis Abraam, remember Abraham, and the same verb with the same object stands at Genesis 19:29, emnesthe ho theos tou Abraam, God remembered Abraham, where it is the reason Lot is delivered from Sodom. What Genesis reports as done, Moses asks to have done again, so his intercession is not a fresh appeal but a claim on a precedent, and he names the man it was made to. The two entries are cross linked. Checked in the Greek, and it settles what Moses is actually offering. Moses says exaleipson me ek tes biblou sou, blot me out of Thy book (Exodus 32:32), and God answers on the same terms, ek tes biblou mou (32:33). The Apocalypse names that book: ou me exaleipso to onoma autou ek tes biblou tes zoes, I will not blot his name out of the book of life (3:5), and whoever is not found written in the biblos tes zoes is cast into the pool of fire (20:15). Biblos is a shared lemma across all four verses, and the verb is the same compound in the surface text, exaleipson against exaleipso, though the two corpora lemmatise it differently so the linter does not catch it. What follows is that Moses is not offering to forfeit his life in the desert; he is offering to be struck out of the book that judgment reads from, which is why Paul's version is anathema from Christ rather than any temporal loss, and why the plea sits inside an argument that ends "and so all Israel should be saved" (Romans 11:26). The stakes in both offers are the soul. The arc these two offers belong to ends at Galatians 3:13, and the entries are now linked. Moses offers to be blotted out and is refused, since "he that hath sinned against me, him will I strike out" (Exodus 32:33) rules out an innocent being traded for the guilty. Paul frames his as a wish he knows he cannot have. Christ is "made a curse for us", but not as the trade Moses offered and God refused. He is not blotted out in the guilty's stead as Moses asked to be; He makes satisfaction for them, offering out of charity something of greater worth than the offence, and it avails for us because Head and members are one body (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III q. 48 a. 2). Exodus 32:33 is not set aside for Him; it was never the mechanism. The shared Greek there is only hyper, Paul wishing himself anathema hyper his brethren and Christ made a curse hyper us, which is too common a preposition to carry weight on its own; the link is the argument rather than the vocabulary, and is recorded as such.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2577.
The verses
Exodus 32:11 · Exodus 32:12 · Exodus 32:13 · Exodus 32:14 · Exodus 32:31 · Exodus 32:32 · Exodus 34:29 · Exodus 34:30 · Exodus 34:31 · Exodus 34:32 · Exodus 34:33 · Exodus 34:34 · Exodus 34:35 · Romans 9:1 · Romans 9:2 · Romans 9:3 · 2 Corinthians 3:7 · 2 Corinthians 3:8 · 2 Corinthians 3:13 · 2 Corinthians 3:18
