236 Ph. Guillaume demurred at his grandfather’s monstrosity and improved the verse to make it more amenable to the Greek-speaking court of Alexandria: Kardiva sklhra; kakwqhvsetai ejp∆ ejscavtwn kai; oJ ajgapw'n kivndunon ejn aujtw/' ajpolei'tai A stubborn mind will fare badly at the end, and whoever loves danger will perish in it. The Greek moves away from the Hebrew anatomical description of the beastly Pharaoh by choosing the temporal sense of tyrja and dropping completely the idea of stench conveyed by çab. The Greek also transforms twbwf into kivnduno" “danger”, “war” or “hazardous enterprise” to give the verse a moral bent. The pun is turned into a proverb. However, the critical turn of the whole verse is kept, in contrast to the ambiguous translation offered by Skehan and Di Lella: ‘… and he who loves what is good will be brought along by it’(28). The beloved goodness here is ironic and refers to Pharaoh’s love for wallowing in the Nile. To conclude, neither Exodus, nor Ezekiel present the tannin as a mundane reptile. Although they call the tannin “snake”, the editors of Pg develop a full-scale mythological narrative that Entmythologisierende snakes and bathing pharaohs water down beyond recovery. Near East School of Theology Ph. GUILLAUME PO Box 13-5780 Chouran Beirut SUMMARY The common translation of the tannin of Exodus 7 as a mere snake misses the powerful mythological overtones of the whole passage. The editors of Pg are drawing on imagery from Ezekiel to mythologize Moses’ morning encounter with Pharaoh on the river bank. Ben Sira was well aware of these connotations and turned them into a joke against Pharaoh. (28) P.W. SKEHAN – A.A. DI LELLA, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (AB 39; Garden City, NY 1987) 163.