The Hebrew Project: Writings - Ruth, Song of Songs, Eccesiastes/Qohelet, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah

 Ruth (t29)

Verses 4:18-22 are chanted.

Song of Songs (t30)

Chapter 1 is sung, as are verses 8:1-7.

Eccesiastes (t31) aka Qohelet

Lamentations (t32)

The entire book of Lamentations is chanted!

Esther (t33)

Daniel (t34)

Ezra (t35a)

Nehemiah (t35b)

Words for the times: Rules for Refugees. Exodus 22:20-23 (BHS) / Ex 22:21-14 (NRSV)

וְגֵ֥ר לֹא־תוֹנֶ֖ה וְלֹ֣א תִלְחָצֶ֑נּוּ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ  מִצְרָֽיִם׃

 

כָּל־אַלְמָנָ֥ה וְיָת֖וֹם לֹ֥א תְעַנּֽוּן׃

 

אִם־עַנֵּ֥ה תְעַנֶּ֖ה אֹת֑וֹ כִּ֣י אִם־צָעֹ֤ק יִצְעַק֙ אֵלַ֔י שָׁמֹ֥עַ אֶשְׁמַ֖ע צַעֲקָתֽוֹ׃

 וְחָרָ֣ה אַפִּ֔י וְהָרַגְתִּ֥י אֶתְכֶ֖ם בֶּחָ֑רֶב וְהָי֤וּ נְשֵׁיכֶם֙ אַלְמָנ֔וֹת וּבְנֵיכֶ֖ם יְתֹמִֽים׃

And as for the "ger": you shall not oppress, you shall not torment him, because you were "ger" in the land of Egypt.

Any widow or orphan, you shall not humiliate.

If you DO humiliate them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry.

And my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword;  then your wives will be widows and your children orphans. (my translation)

---------------

I double checked the definition of "ger", which is often translated as alien, or stranger, or resident alien.  Here is how HALOT defines it:

גֶר is a man who (alone or with his family) leaves village and tribe because of war 2S 43 Is 164 , famine Ru 11 , epidemic, blood guilt etc. and seeks shelter and residence at another place, where his right of landed property, marriage and taking part in jurisdiction, cult and war has been curtailed... 

I think the word we are looking for is "refugee".

Home on the Range of Meaning. Exodus 22:4-5 (BHS); Exodus 22:5-6 (NRSV)

 When someone causes a field or vineyard to be grazed over, or lets livestock loose to graze in someone else’s field, restitution shall be made from the best in the owner’s field or vineyard. 

When fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the field is consumed, the one who started the fire shall make full restitution. 

The above verses (Exodus 22.4-5 in Hebrew BHS, 22.5-6 in NRSV) are fairly straight forward, except for one funny thing.  All the words I've underline in English are basically the same root in Hebrew.  I actually thought the first verse ought to be translated "When someone causes a field or vineyard to be burned or sets fire loose to burn someone else's field, etc., etc."  I'm still not quite sure why it isn't translated that way, but I admit, I was distracted from my research.

This is what distracted me:  the range of meanings for the simple Hebrew root בער

1.  burn
2.  graze, devastate, sweep away, remove (from the "graze" meaning, the noun, "livestock" no doubt is derived
3.  camel or cattle droppings.  These were used for fuel, so presumably the meaning is derived from #1?
4.  be stupid.  No doubt this meaning is derived from meaning #3.  How comforting!! In all civilizations, bovine (or camel!) droppings is the word for "stupid"!

The thing I don't get is "graze".  How does that become part of this group of words?  There are other Hebrew words for graze.  Do cattle (or camels) devastate a field by grazing? as if it were burnt?   I admit to ignorance on matters agricultural - maybe it makes more sense to someone else.

But the fact that BS can also mean Be Stupid just makes me giggle.

:)

Who pays for what? Exodus 21:19

So I know it's been ages, but I need to untangle this verse.

Exodus 21:19.

It continues from verse 18, which might read,

"And if men are fighting, and one strikes (smites!) the other with a rock or his fist and he does not die, but falls to his bed..."

So now we continue with 19a:

"then if he gets up and walks around outside upon a staff, then he (the smiter) is innocent of the smiting..."

And then we get to the weird part, 21:19b.  Five little Hebrew words:

רַ֥ק שִׁבְתּ֛וֹ יִתֵּ֖ן וְרַפֹּ֥א יְרַפֵּֽא׃ (rak shivto yitten verappo yerappe)

• rak means "only not, except"
• shivto is the noun form of the verb y-sh-v (sit, dwell) with a possessive pronoun tacked on the end.  So it could mean his throne, his sitting, his dwelling
• yitten is the 3ms of the verb "to give, put, set"
• And the last two words, verappo yerappe are different forms of the same verb, r-p-', which means "heal".  One is infinitive absolute.  The other is the same tense as yitten, and like yitten, also 3ms (3rd person masculine singular). Together they would ordinarily make it emphatic.  He healingly heals. Certainly heals. Something like that.

So together?  "...he is innocent of the smiting, except he is giving his seat/throne/sitting and certainly he is healing?"

This is not how the Bible translates this, and my lexicons stretch to try to accommodate the years of translators and interpreters.

Apparently when shivto appears with yitten, it does not mean "he gives his seat" (or "his seat gives" - hard to tell subject here) but rather that his sitting is given - it means enforced idleness.  The time off work that our poor smite-ee had to spend at home.

Unless... maybe it's the smiter who is still the subject of "to give"?  "He is innocent of the smiting, except (only not) the sitting he (the smiter) gave."  So the smiter IS liable for the victim's subsequent disability payments?  Aha!

And my old friend the infinitive absolute, which ought to give emphasis to the verb, "to heal" is here used in a different way.   HALOT says the absolute in this verse means "to pay the costs of healing".  WHAT?  Okay, maybe the absolute can mean "healing" but then ... he heals the healing?

Grrrr.....

Okay, I'll try again... "the smiter is innocent except the idleness he gave and the healing he heals".

Hmmm....

This is what the usual suspects have to say:

• then the assailant shall be free of liability, except to pay for the loss of time, and to arrange for full recovery.  (NRSV)
• then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed. (KJV)
• the one who struck the blow will have no liability, other than to compensate the injured party for the enforced inactivity and to take care of the injured party until the cure is complete. (NJB)
• the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness and his cure. (JPS)

I have no trouble translating "give" as "pay".  That would be "he is innocent except he pays for the idleness".  But then my infinitive absolute of healing ought to be an absolute of certainty: "certainly he heals" and not payment.  I think HALOT might be wrong on this point.

Does the verse say that the smiter pays for the idleness AND the healing?  or, does he pay for the idleness and ALSO certainly heal?  Heal is a verb, after all... same tense as give/pay.

I think HALOT (The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament) is wrong.  I think the NRSV and the old King James are right.

Our smiter must pay for time lost, and he must completely (certainly) heal.  I suppose it is implied that he also pay for the healing, but I do not think it is directly stated.

What happened to the Fleshpots? Exodus 16.3

Ever hear that expression "the fleshpots of Europe?"  I always thought it referred to sin, as in sins of the flesh, as in, SEX!  I thought fleshpots were brothels or sleazy dancehalls or places to connect with a (probably paid) person for carnal purposes.  Carnal meaning sex.  Not meat (as in chile con carne).

Because I think "meat" is what those original fleshpots in Exodus referred to.

If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread... (Ex 16.3, NRSV)

In Hebrew it is two words, pots of the flesh,סִ֣יר הַבָּשָׂ֔ר (sir habbasar) and clearly followed by "ate our fill of bread".  It is saying that we sat by the meat pots, the stew pots and ate our share of bread.  It has nothing to do with sex, just that the Hebrew word for meat (basar) can also be translated, "flesh".

Still... if I passed an establishment with a flashing "FLESHPOT" sign, I'm not sure I would go in and order a beef stroganoff.  The word seems to have acquired a life of its own.

Hardening one's Heart

I'm up to Exodus 9 so far, and I'm interested in the various words used to harden Pharaoh's heart.  Now the heart was the centre of will and decision-making for the ancient Hebrews, so the hardening of the heart is making the brain hard -- block-headed (thank you Ehud for this image!), stubborn.  Not evil -- but stubborn, obstinate, pig-headed.

Sometimes Pharaoh's heart is or remains hard.  Sometimes God hardens it for him.  Sometimes Pharaoh hardens it himself.  I searched "harden* + heart" in Accordance (my Bible software) and came up with 19 hits in the book of Exodus (from 4:21 to 14:17).

The most common verb used is חזק hh-z-q, which has "be strong" as its basic meaning.  To be strong, grow strong, or harden. (12 times)

The next word (which appears both in verb and adjective form) is כבד kh-v-d, which means to be honoured.  It usually has a very positive meaning.  But it also means to be heavy or... to be dull! Pharaoh dulls his heart. (6 times)

The final word is קשׁה q-sh-h which is the most straightforward, and just means to be heavy or hard.  It only appears once.

It's a shame that English translations don't make any distinction here.  

Call the Midwife! Exodus 1

Exodus starts out on a strong note.  The names of the 12 sons/tribes are repeated, and then we read that Joseph and his brothers and their generation all die.  The Hebrews continue to multiply, and along comes a king of Egypt who doesn't remember Joseph.  The usual fears about a large ethnic group not under your religious/cultural control come to the surface and the Hebrews are put to forced labour.

Was this the corvée labour with which Egypt built the pyramids and other great public works?  Some say yes, but corvée was really a form of taxation - a class of people (peasants!) was forced to work for a certain number of days per year.  The next verses of Exodus put the kibosh on that.

Ex. 1:15   The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,  16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.”

This was a guy who did not like having Hebrews around!  Especially strong ones!  The midwives are not going to play along and respond to the Pharaoh's questions by explaining that Hebrew women are so vigorous that they manage to give birth before the midwife can get there.  That's when the king tells all his people that every Hebrew boy born must be thrown in the Nile.

From a word-lover's point of view, we get to see a lot of the Hebrew root י־ל־ד (y-l-d).

In its basic (called the qal) form, it means to give birth, or to beget. (yalad)
The passive (nifal) form: to be born. (nolad)
The piel form: to help to give birth.  It is the feminine participle of this form that gives us the word for midwife: t®d;RlÅyVm (meyalledet, plural meyalldot)

There are other verbal forms, and of course the nouns, yeled (male child) and yaldah (female child).  There's even an adjective, yalod, but some interpret that as the participle of the qal passive verb.  If there is such a thing as the qal passive.  Which is debated.

But it's fun to read a chapter where you get a whole bunch of different forms of the same root.

Damn I love this stuff!!  :)

Genesis DONE! I did it!

That was a very satisfying exercise!   Finished off chapter 50 of Genesis (Joseph dies, extracts promise from brothers to take his bones home) and even figured out that little Hebrew verse at the end of the chapter in the BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) which I am pretty sure says that I have just completed 1534 verses.  It is unpointed Hebrew (no vowel marks) and I suspect might not even be BH, since I couldn't find some words in HALOT.   Maybe it's Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew or one of the other Hebrew dialects?

Regardless.  I READ THE BOOK OF GENESIS IN HEBREW!!   ALL OF IT!!!

I am very pleased with myself and am looking forward to Exodus.

My study of Waltke & O'Connor is coming along nicely too.  The introductory matter is not all my cup of tea (history of the language), but some of it is exactly my cup of tea (writing systems, linguistics).  Fun, fun, fun!!

Verses that caught my eye in Genesis 49 and 50:

Verse 49:11, "he washes his garments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes"
The word for robe (or garment) is סוּת.  Which is pronounced... er... "suit".  That struck me as really funny!

49:25, ...by the God of your father, who will help you,

by the Almighty who will bless you

with blessings of heaven above,

blessings of the deep that lies beneath,

blessings of the breasts and of the womb. 

The word for breasts is the root word for Almighty and the word for womb is the root for compassion/mercy.  Keep that in mind, Oh ye who think of God in purely masculine terms.

Chapter 50 surprised me with all the embalming going on, but I guess since they were in Egypt it makes perfect sense.

I also discovered (at Gen 49.23) a great expression for archers:  בַּעֲלֵי חִצִּם, ba'aley hhitsim, masters of arrows!

Amazing how much I learn when I give up daytime TV for Lent!

Genesis 42: Joseph incognito.

Back to the books!  Chapter 42 was fun - lots of easy vocab and lots of repetition.

One word that was not easy - but was not a totally new one - is the word נכר (n-kh-r).  I will use it as an example of how verb stems word in Hebrew.

The three consonants you see above make up the root.  Various vowel patterns and sometimes the addition of affixes to the root can change the stem of a verb.  There are maybe 8 common stems and a few obscure ones.

So here's how it works.

You have a root, and by using that root in a particular pattern (or stem), you change its meaning.  The meaning is often predictable.  One stem is causative (the causative of "ascend" for example is "cause to ascend", which means to "bring up";  causative of "go out" is "bring out"). Another stem turns the verb into its passive form ("go down" becomes "is gone down").  There is also a passive causative stem ("bring down" becomes "is brought down").  Some stems are reflexive or done to the speaker:  "he kills" might become "he kills himself".

Not the greatest explanation, but it gives you an idea.  And of course none of the stems are always the causative, the passive, the reflexive, etc.  But they tend to be.  Fun, right?   There's a reason people are still studying this stuff after 3000 years.  

So back to נכר.  It doesn't appear in the basic stem in the Bible but its basic range of meaning seems to revolve around disguise and recognition.  In Gen 42.7 it appears twice, in different stems.

When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke harshly to them. (NRSV)

The first occurrence is in what is usually the causative stem.  It means to recognize, to acknowledge or to investigate what is unknown.  It is, in fact, one of the words that connects the Joseph story with the Tamar story in Genesis 38.  The second occurrence is in a ... well let's be honest, a weirder stem.  I'm not sure quite how to describe it, but in the three instances in which this word appears in the Bible it makes it mean, "make oneself unrecognizable" (1 Kings 14.5), "act as a stranger" (here in Gen 42.7) and "make oneself known" (Prov 20.11).  The first 2 might mean the same thing, but how does that Proverbs reference get in here?

This also shows you a flaw in the NRSV translation - Joe doesn't treat this brothers like strangers -- they do not recognize him!  Not quite the same thing.

נכר is also the root of the noun, "foreigner" or "foreign country".  So maybe the basic meaning of the root has something to do with familiarity?

Who knows.  Not me, that's for sure.  But it's an example of the poetic nature of Biblical Hebrew prose.  I sometimes think of Hebrew as painting a picture rather than spelling it out in words.  You might get the image of foreign-ness, then a layer of reflexiveness or causativeness.  You can get the message, but might not be able to describe the picture.

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.  

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!!