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!