Go to Joseph - Genesis 41

This was a loooooong chapter!  A hefty 57 verses in which Pharaoh has the dreams (skinny cows and ears of corn eating up fat cows and ears of corn), tells the dreams, gets Joseph to interpret the dreams (7 years of famine following after 7 years of abundance), appoints Joseph as administrator, the abundance comes and goes and Joseph sells his stored grain during the subsequent years of famine.   Lotta story there!!  And of course, Christmas and family and holidays keeping me from focusing on more than one or two verses at a time.

Some nice word play too.  Some of it I had to read over 2 or 3 times to see what I was missing -- the word for "seven" and the word for "abundance" vary by a single DOT!

שׁבע שׁני השׂבע (sheva shney ha-seva) = seven years of the abundance

But if you notice the red letters, the first one (far right) is a letter shin (dot over the right arm) and the one that is 3rd from the end (left) is the letter sin (sot over left bar).  I don't always pay attention to vowels, because they can change a lot depending on whether a word has additional syllables added (for example, the definite article, or an object or possessive suffix).  But I can usually read the letters themselves okay.  This time I read "seven years of the seven" over and over!  Such a little dot...

An expression that really jumped out at me was in verse 40a.  In English (NRSV) it reads

"You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command;"

But the Hebrew says, "You shall be over my house, and all my people shall kiss your mouth"!

"Kiss" is the most common meaning for the verb נשׁק (nashak), but according to HALOT it can also mean "to be armed".  So the verse gets interpreted, "You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be armed according to your mouth" or, order themselves according to the words of your mouth.

Gotta love those interpreters.

Genesis 38 and 39

I did read Genesis 38, the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar, which interrupts the Joseph story.  I even wrote part of a post about it, but it seems to have disappeared.

It encouraged me to go and reread the beginning of Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative, which explains why the story is not randomly placed, but purposefully set after the introduction the Joseph story.

I moved on to Gen 39, the meeting of Joseph and Mrs. Potiphar, so wonderfully portrayed by Donny Osmond and Joan Collins in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

What I particularly noticed in the Hebrew of Chapter 39 is the use of words that kind of sound the same.  The word for "beside", אצל (etsel) occurs 4 times.  Also with that "ts-l" combination of sounds is the word for "succeed or prosper", מצליח (matsliach), which appears 3 times.  I don't suppose it's significant -- just struck me as interesting -- and it would sound nice, read aloud.  

I Am the Very Model of a Biblical Philologist

Go, go, go, Joseph! Genesis 37

Ah, the great novella begins at last.  I do love this story.

Some odds and ends - obviously 2 sources here - one calls Joe's dad Jacob, one calls him Israel.

A couple of times (v. 5 and v. 8) we are told that his brothers "hated Joseph even more".  You might recall I posted about the meaning of Joseph's name a few weeks ago.  Joseph (יוֹסֵף) yosef, is connected with the verb meaning to add or increase or do again (יספ) y-s-f.

Well, when we are told that the brothers hate Joseph even more, we hear vayosifu (וַיּוֹסִפוּ), "they do again/increase yet to hate" -- in other words, they hate him even more!!  And it sounds just like Joseph's name.

The traditional coat of many colours is probably an ornamented tunic of some kind.

And Potiphar!  What is Potiphar's job?  He is a eunuch or courtier (סְרִיס) seris, and his title is "sar hattabbachim".  Sar (שַר) is usually chief or prince (think of sarah, princess), but t-b-ch (טבח) is slaughter!  Which means the word gets used for both cooks and butchers, and guards and executioners!!!

According to Speiser, sar hattabachim (prince of cooks) is chief steward, whereas rav (captain or official) hattabbachim would be the captain of the guard.  I was unconvinced until he mentioned that a title (including "eunuch" of course) can be 'as far removed from its original connotation as, say, "Lord Chamberlain".' (p.291-2, Genesis)

Interesting.

The story of Joseph appears to pause in Chapter 38 for the story of Tamar - but if you've read The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter, you might see it a bit differently.  Will I have the energy to re-read his chapter on Tamar before reading Genesis 38 in Hebrew?  Stay tuned....

Genesis 36: In which I meet Mehetabel.

Chapter 36 is a list of names.  All the descendants and tribes of Edom, that is those descended from Jacob's brother Esau.  One of the names (in v. 39) is מְהֵיְטַבְאֵל (meheytavel) or Mehetabel.

This name reminded me of Mehitabel, which must be simply an alternate spelling.

And Mehitabel reminded me of Archy (the cockroach) and Mehitabel (the cat), about whom I had not thought in many, many years.

I googled around and was reminded that I had met them at school, in the poetry of Don Marquis.

Which led me to a Wikipedia page for Shinbone Alley -- the MUSICAL!!!! based on the poems about Archy and Mehitabel and was written by (among others) MEL BROOKS!!!!!! and whose original Broadway cast included (among others) MISS EARTHA KITT!!!!!!

This all kind of blew my mind, as you might guess from all the exclamation points.

I remember liking the poems a great deal as a girl - of course I didn't know what a cockroach was at that time.

I love musicals.

I revere Mel Brooks.

And EARTHA???  Words cannot express.

See where the Bible will lead you?

:)

Bad Reuben. Lots of dead people. Gen 35

What kind of guy sleeps with his father's concubine?   Reuben, that's who.  I have a feeling this will come back and bite him.  It's just related as a fact in Gen 35.22 and then is not mentioned again in the chapter.  The rest of the chapter tells of the death of Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, and then the death of Rachel, while bearing Benjamin (v. 18).

Benjamin is (בנימין) ”binyamin”, son of a right hand.  But Rachel on her deathbed named him Ben-oni (בן־אוני) ”son of mourning”.  Jacob/Israel wasn't having any of that and called the boy Benjamin.  I note the difference between naming ("called his name" in Hebrew) and calling ("called him').

And speaking of deathbeds.  When Jacob's father Isaac dies (v. 29), he doesn't just die.  In the NRSV he "breathed his last" and then died.  The word for this in Hebrew is גוע ('ava), according to HALOT, "essentially to gasp for breath," and later, "to pass away... to perish."  BDB has nothing about breath, but I like the way the NRSV translation tried to capture the fuller meaning.

A little Esther

I haven't been keeping up with my chapter-a-day of Genesis.  I sprained my ankle on Monday and being told by the doc to keep my ankle above the level of my heart as much as possible, I have spent a good part of this week slouched down on my couch with my foot propped up on the back of the couch.  Hard position to read from.  Or to knit from.  Or really to do anything but watch TV and get a sore neck from.

I have watched countless episodes of Love It or List It and Property Brothers.  I watched 3 adaptations of Pride and Prejudice:  Bride and Prejudice (the Bollywood version), Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth) and Pride & Prejudice (with Kiera Knightly).  I couldn't bear to complete the set with the 1985 BBC version. Compared with the more recent film adaptations it is rather like watching a reading of the book.  Too much talking, not enough doing. Don't even think of suggesting the Lawrence Olivier one.  Never.

I am now watching episodes of Inspector Lewis so that I can try to figure out his seminarian-manqué sergeant, James Hathaway (played brilliantly by Lawrence Fox).

The ankle is much improved and I can manage the car if I wear very tightly laced boots.  Yes, it was my driving foot.  But now we have had 30 or so centimetres of dry powder dumped on us and it makes for very unsteady walking.  So I jammed out on Hebrew Club and stayed home.  Again.

Which brings me to Esther.  Hebrew Club is reading the book of Esther so instead of doing my chapter of Genesis today I thought I would catch up on the doings of Mordecai and Esther in the court of King Ahashverosh.

I.  Love.  This.  Book.

Such a great read!  And the Late Hebrew is easier than I thought it would be and has some interesting quirks.  I like the simple repetitions of nouns to convey ideas like יוֺם וָיוֺם (yom vayom), "day and day" = "each day" or נַעֲרָה וְנָעֲרָה (na'arah vena'arah), "girl and girl" = "each girl."  There are lots of Persian loan words in Esther, reasonably enough, since it is about a Jewish young woman who is living the harem of King Ahashverosh (Ahasuerus) of Persia.

I found a terrific article all about the language in Esther - one of the ideas I picked up there was that Persian loan words might be used for snobbery -- like using French words in English conversation.  You know what I mean, chèrie, n'est ce pas?  The savoir-faire of the Hebrew authors of Esther is very evident.  Here's a link to Holmstedt and Screnock's paper: Whither Esther? A Linguistic Profile of the Book of Esther.

Au revoir!

Dinah: Raped or not? Genesis 34

This is a chapter that has had quite a bit of analysis thrown at it lately.  I imagine feminist interpretations abound.

But it's kind of an interesting story.  Dinah (she of the 12 brothers) wanders off in Canaan to hang with the local girls ("daughters of the land").  Shechem, a local prince sees her, takes her, lies with her and ... and here's the trick ... defiles/degrades her.

Now is that rape, per se?  Or has he defiled/degraded her by sleeping with her before her family has consented to a marriage?  She is, presumably, a valuable property.

Shechem loves her.  And he wants to marry her.  He asks his dad to set things up.

But we never get to hear Dinah's side of the story.  Only her brothers' side of things.  Simeon and Levi trick Shechem and the Shechemites.  They will have to be circumcized if they wish to marry Israelites.  So they AGREE!!!!  All the males in Shechem town AGREE!!!!!!

And on the 3rd day of their pain... Here come the bad boys of Israel with thirsty swords. They slaughter the men (who are helpless with the pain of the circumcision) and plunder the women, the children the property.

The text is not approving of this.  Shechem is painted as the good guy, and Simeon and Levi as bad guys.  Dinah, of course, gets little mention at all.

A few interesting words -- but the best one was in the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible.  Not content with the modern "whore" that most English translators use in Gen 34.31 they go with "strumpet".  Strumpet.  What a wonderful word!

The Hebrew is זֺנָה (zonah) which HALOT defines as "woman occasionally or professionally committing fornication".  From the verb, zanah, to commit fornication.

Jacob and Esau meet. Genesis 33

Jacob anticipates trouble, meeting the brother he tricked after 20 years apart.  He splits his families and flocks (so that he won't lose *all* his "property").  But Esau is a forgiving sort and meets Jacob with open arms -- falls on his neck (love this expression!) and kisses him.

Jacob offers gifts, Esau refuses, Jacob insists, Esau accepts.  Rabbi Friedman points out that "Jacob and Esau are going through the classic Near Eastern conventions, which continue to this day." (p. 115, n. 33:9)  That's interesting.  To me it really looks like grovelling.  I just don't trust Jacob, and do you blame me??!!!  Esau is VERY big-hearted.

Jacob says he will go slowly (because of the children and the animals), follow Esau and meet him in Seir, but he in fact goes first to Succoth and then to the city of Shechem, where he buys a plot of land.

Shechem, is the son of Hamor.  I assume that we will soon have an explanation of why the city, Shechem is named for the man, Shechem.  Jacob buys land from the sons of Hamor.  And Shechem (the man) will play a big role in the next chapter.

If it matters (and I don't know if it does), Hamor's name means donkey, and Shechem's means shoulder.

Genesis 32

I'm not sure I'm very fond of old Jacob.

Genesis 32 is kind of transitional.  Jacob has all his wealth on the hoof, and when he hears that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men, he sends a pretty generous gift and does some serious grovelling (via servants/slaves).

This is also the chapter where he wrestles with God/an angel and has his name changed to Israel.  And the whole dislocated hip thing?  Not sure what's going on there.  Do the children of Israel not eat the sciatic muscle of animals?  Would they want to?

But Jacob is still a sneak.

I think this is a chapter whose main purpose is etiological:  explain why we don't eat the sciatic muscle.  Why Peniel and Mahanaim are so named.  Where the name Israel itself comes from.

Not exactly action-packed.


Interesting word, מלאך (mal-akh), meaning angel or messenger.  There is no way of knowing which meaning is intended when you see the word in Hebrew.

In verse 32.2 (32.1 in English), Jacob is met by the angels of God, מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים (malakhey elohim).  Then just two verses later, 32.4 (Eng=32.3), he sends messengers to his brother Esau!  Messengers!!  מַלְאָכִים (malakhim)!!  Very confusing.

What's in a name: Joseph

There are two Hebrew verbs that I often get mixed up:  אכפ (aleph-samekh-peh) which has a basic meaning of "gather, take away, assemble, withdraw;"  and יספ (yod-samekh-peh) which means "add, continue, do again, increase."   Because aleph and yod are both weak letters, they can drop out or change depending on the particular conjugation or meaning of the verb, so there are forms of each that look very much alike.  As well, yod is the verbal prefix for a certain type of verb.

 I confess, I almost always have to look them up.  Or go from context.

So which one is the source of Joseph's name?  Gen 30.23-24 from the NRSV:

23 She conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach”;  24 and she named him Joseph, saying, “May the LORD add to me another son!”

Both!  I don't know if this is a combination of 2 separate traditions? or if they were just covering all their bases.  Or maybe the 2 verbs were originally the same word?  Hard to know.

Goodbye Laban! Genesis 31 (and 32:1)

In the Hebrew, Laben kissing everyone goodbye and hitting the road is the first verse of chapter 32, but obviously, it ought to be numbered 31.55, as it is in many English Bibles.

I HATED this chapter.  Very long and boring and repetitive.  More about sheep and goats.  Rocks and pillars.  And sneaky Miss Rachel (men do choose wives like their mothers!) who steals her fathers household gods/teraphim (images? statuettes? masks?) and then stuffs them in a camel saddle and plonks herself down on it -- "don't ask me to stand up, Dad, it's that time of the month!"

Hmph.

Things I liked:  in verses 20 and onwards we hear of Jacob deceiving Laban.  There is a very pretty expression used here for deceive: וַיִּגְנֹב יַעֲקֹב אֶת-לֵב לָבָן (vayyignov yaakov et-lev lavan): Jacob stole Laban's heart.

That's what the NRSV says, anyway.  The JPS (Jewish Publication Society) Tanakh and the New Jerusalem Bible say that Jacob outwitted Laban.  The Revised English and the New American Bibles say he hoodwinked him.  Both good choices, and better than deceived, I think.

It's easy to forget that lev (heart) in Hebrew is the area of the person where the will resides.  It is where decisions are made.  A Hebrew "hard-hearted" Pharaoh might be what we would call a block-head.  Stupid.  Or stubborn. Hard of mind. But not cruel, necessarily.

So when I read that Jacob "stole Laban's heart," I try to think about stealing or sneaking away with his mind, his thinking.  Taking away his decision making ability.  I think "outwit" wins the prize.


The other cool word I came across was the verb כסף (k-s-f) meaning "long for, long greatly for"  It only shows up 4 times in the Bible, but it is the same root as the word for silver or money.  Root of all evil, indeed!!

Who is Father Abraham? and why is he reading in Hebrew?

In my link list you might notice "Fr. Abraham Reads the Bible in Hebrew".  This is a link to the Mechon-Mamre site where the Hebrew Bible is available in various formats and languages, and indeed, read aloud in mp3 format.

Ehud (my Hebrew prof) recommended that we listen to him - his accent is as perfect as we will ever hear.

So who is Father Abraham?  He was born in Jerusalem to an ultra-orthodox Jewish family in 1913, joined the British Army in 1939, was taken prisoner by the Germans in Greece in 1941 and while imprisoned, read the New Testament.  Upon his release he went to England and was baptized into the Catholic Church.  Returning home to the Middle East, he joined the Benedictines and later, the Trappists.  It was not always easy being a Jew among Arab Christians.

Here are two bios of him.  What an interesting man.  And what a great legacy he has left the world.

Father Abraham Shmuelof

Abraham Shmuelof

Click here to hear him reading Psalm 23.

Speckled and Spotted and Black, Oh My!! Genesis 30

Well THAT was more information about the copulation of sheep and goats than I really needed to know.

After his 14 years of service for wives Leah and Rachel, Jacob wants to quit his job herding his father-in-law Laban's flocks, and go home to his own people (remember Isaac and Rebecca and brother Esau?).  But Laban is not keen to lose such a good worker - his flocks have done VERY well since Jacob took over.

He asks Jacob, what shall I pay you? and Jacob replies that he will take all the spotted and speckled sheep and goats and every black lamb from Laban's flocks, and Laban can keep the rest.  Sneaky old Laban (remember the wife switcheroo?), promptly takes all the speckled, spotted and black animals and sends them off with his own sons.

So Jacob gets a little weird.

He takes fresh (moist!) branches from different trees, peels away the bark, and leaves the stripped rods in the animals' water trough.  Presumably the rods thus stripped are speckled and spotted, because the animals then come to drink, and they mate in front of the rods, and their offspring are speckled and/or spotted.  Also striped.  And remember, Laban took away the black lambs?  I think he must have left the black sheep, because Jacob had his own flocks face (really?) Laban's black animals so that they would breed black lambs too.  He bred the strong animals in front of the magic rods for his own flocks and the feeble animals he left for Laban's flocks.

Now I know I'm not the only dirty mind who sees phallic imagery here.

I have E.A. Speiser's Genesis commentary from the Anchor Yale Bible series, and he points out that the story is mentioned again in the next chapter from another point of view (E -- this one is J).  In Gen 31.38, the time that Jacob has spent in Laban's service is 20 years - 14 for the women and 6 for the flocks.  So this breeding plan did take a little time to become successful.

...Jacob finds a way to outwit his father-in-law, through prenatal conditioning of the flock by means of visual aids - in conformance with universal folk beliefs. (p. 238)

Universal folk belief?!?!!

Richard Elliot Friedman in his Commentary on the Torah notes

Jacob sets up the peeled (phallic?) sticks where the animals mate. When they mate in front of the sticks, they have offspring that have patterns like those on the peeled sticks. It is unclear if this was believed to work genetically, or was thought to be a practice of sympathetic magic, or was thought to be miraculous. ... (p. 103-4, n. 30:39)

This was a hard chapter to read.  Lots of words that I had to look up and probably won't ever need to know again.  Peeled poplar rods anyone?  Sometimes it's hard to take the time to really READ the words when I just want to get to the story.

I did like the beginning of this chapter, when Reuben went off to get the mandrake love fruits for his mother Leah.  The word for the love fruits is דודאימ (dudayim).  It has the same ד ו ד (dalet - vav - dalet) root as the words for beloved, kinsman (or -woman) and of course, David.

Found a great photo of the fruit and an article about them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the Cloisters Museum and Garden blog:

The trickster is tricked

Jacob, Jacob, Jacob... all that scheming with your mother to steal Esau's birthright and you thought you'd get away scot-free?  I don't think so.

Genesis 29 is the story of Jacob's wooing of Rachel and then having Leah slip between the sheets instead. Fourteen years total he worked for Rachel, and he ends up with her, Leah, and two bonus slavegirls thrown in for good measure:  Zilpah and Bilhah.

God knows that Leah is hated, so he opens her womb and Rachel is barren.  Hmph.

Word play I liked:

Jacob met Rachel at a well (such a fertile place to meet future wives - see also Abraham's servant looking for a wife for Isaac and meeting Rivkah/Rebecca at the well in Gen 24).

She is there to water the flock.  So Jacob steps up and waters it for her.  וישק (vayyashke).  He watered.  And in the next line, he kisses her!  וישׁק -- exactly the same consonants, but with vowels it is (vayyishshak). He kissed. 

What fun it must have been to try to figure out what that passage meant before the Masoretes added the vowels to the text in the Middle Ages.

The other word play that piqued my curiosity is this:  what the heck is wrong with Leah?  Her eyes are weak? tender? lovely? (Gen 29.17) Which does your Bible use?  HALOT says weak, as does the Greek Septuagint (LXX), which was translated from the Hebrew in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.

But what caught my eye is that in verse 33, Leah says that God has looked "on my affliction".  And I always confuse the word for affliction עני (aniy) with the word for eye, עינ (ayin).  Connection? or coincidence?  Who knows?

Jacob's ladder? or ramp! no, escalator!!

Today I read Genesis 28, about Jacob, his dream of angels going up and down something or other, and choosing a God (or not).

The word that is usually translated "ladder" in Gen 28.12 is סלם (sullam). It's a hapax legomenon, that is, it only appears this once in the Bible.  I checked HALOT just for the fun of it (Koehler & Baumgartner's The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament), and they gloss the word, "stepped ramp, flight of steps."

I checked similar words and sure enough, the word סללה, (solelah) is the word for an assault ramp, like the one at Masada, and is attested to almost a dozen times in 7 different biblical books.  It certainly looks like the same root as the unique סלם word, so ramp or something ramp-like would be a good translation.

Come to think of it... that makes the Simpsons' escalator to heaven a fair image!

From the always entertaining Simpsonswiki

Anyway.  After his dream, Jacob decides that the LORD might just be the God for him.  Maybe.  He has a few conditions:

If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God (Gen 28.20b-21)

I can relate.  We'd all like to make sure God's the real deal before we hook up. Of course God might feel the same way about us ...

Gen 27: Motherly Love

I am trying to read a chapter of Hebrew every day, and I just realized that I have finished HALF of the book of Genesis!!  In Hebrew!!!

Today I finished up Genesis 27, where we see Jacob pulling the fast one on Esau.  And that sneaky Rivkah - talk about playing favourites!!  No doubt who her golden boy is.

And no surprise that birthright בכרה (bekhorah) and blessing ברכה (berakhah) are practically the same word - just flip a couple of letters.


I also wondered about a word origin/mnemonic:
If English camel comes from Hebrew גמל (gamal) does the English kid (of a goat) come from גדי (gedi) ?