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.