A comparison of measured multi-frequency (1.42, 4.99, 13.4 and 37 GHz) microwave brightness temperatures of a relatively homogeneous soil (United States Water Conservation Laboratory, Phoenix, Arizona) over a variety of moisture conditions and antenna view angles with those computed from presently available theory reveals that a partial understanding of the microwave emission properties of specular soils has been achieved. An empirical model is presented which allows relatively good agreement between measured and computed soil moisture profiles over appropriate skin depths for moderately moist to saturated moisture concentrations. Complications arising from non-specular surface and volume scattering due, for example, to vegetal cover or terrain irregularities have been minimized in the measurements and ignored in the calculations.