The association of Moses’ name with such wicked worship is so shocking that rabbinic scribes refused to accept the statement and instead inserted a raised nun (נ) between the first two consonants of the word, thereby changing mšh, Moses,
into mnšh, Manasseh,
1 pointing ahead to Judah’s wicked king (2 Kings 21:1–26); see the KJV translation. It was felt that the evil worship of Judges 18:1–31 was compatible with Manasseh, not Moses, who was everything to Judaism. But because the ancient scribes were careful to make clear that the letter was not original to the text, we can be assured that the original reading is Moses.
30 And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.