Therefore, he's not a prophet per the law given to Moses.
The Law of Moses implies that the prophet only speak what God tells him. In that sense God is really the prophet, and the so-called prophet merely an avatar of God. If the prophet takes it on himself to speak a prophesy that's not God's prophesy, then according to the Law that man is a false prophet.
So the children of Israel asked Moses the perfect question: if the prophesy is from God, and not the prophet, and the prophet is just the delivery boy, how will those receiving the delivery know if it's from the prophet himself, or from God, since God speaks to, through, the prophet, and not directly to those receiving the prophesy?
It's the problem of mediation. For instance did an angel deliver the Law on Sinai? If so, is he a mediator for God, or God himself? If the former, then, like a human prophet, might an angel deliver something not given by God, but devised by the angel? If you answer no, then the angel is not a mediator for God, but, God in the form of an angel; which would seemingly transgress your desire not to have a deified avatar?
Are angels deified avatars? For it would seem like without freewill of some sort, angels are merely divine avatars through which God's work is performed. Which perhaps begs the question why Moses parted the sea with a wooden rod as avatar rather than an angelic avatar coming down from heaven to part the sea?
Which segues back to the question of questions: what is the "testimony" עדת in Exodus 16:33 such that Aaron appears to be under the impression or misimpression it's the face of God? Is the עדת "testimony" a wooden angel? If so, how many forms do they come in? For we know that when God tells Moses to attach a seraph to the wooden testimony עדת (later named "Nehushtan," Hebrew for
bronze-seraph) he chooses to make it (the seraph) out of bronze.
If angels come in bronze and wood surely Walmart sells them in plastic too? You know, like their Chocolate Jesus.
In truth, we should suspect, since the Bible makes it suspect, that there's a spiritual gradation associated with inert materials like metal, versus living products like wood. They appear to be juxtaposed in a way that's not just posing for the camera.
Which tells us that Moses turning his rod into יהוה נסי and נחשתן is extremely telling since in this one avatar he's
shatnez-izing his divine avatar by mixing unlike materials and kingdoms, metal and wood, as though that avatar were a high priest (who can wear
shatnez) able to enter into the very presence of God or else represent that Presence for those with perhaps circumcised eyes whereby the
mohel cut deep enough to allow them to see that deep into the private parts of the Torah (
Rosh Hashanah 29a).
John