Itamar Kislev, «The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and Literary Criticism: The Case of Numbers 27,15-23», Vol. 90 (2009) 59-67
A careful attention to the change in the employment of Greek equivalents in the translation of Hebrew words in the Septuagint may help us to identify involvement of different translators. Such a change may sometimes point to some stages in the composition of the Hebrew text. In this article some interesting differences in the vocabulary of the Septuagint in the passage of the investiture of Joshua in Num 27, 15-23 are examined and with some other literal-critical considerations lead to exact exploring of the literal process of the graduated formation of the Hebrew passage.
66 Itamar Kislev
v. 19 was added first, and at a later stage the description of the
implementation in vv. 22b-23 was inserted.
This conclusion is further substantiated by a comparison of the order of
the actions in the command section (vv. 18-20) and the implementation
section (vv. 22-23). In the instructions given in v. 19, Moses is commanded
to stand Joshua before Eleazar and the community and to appoint him, the
instructions to carry out these two tasks being juxtaposed next to one
another. In the description of the implementation in vv. 22-23, however, the
two actions are separated by the description of Moses’ leaning his hands on
Joshua. If these two additions were carried out by one pen, how is the
divergence in order to be explained?
It is reasonable to assume that the scribe who added the description of
the implementation process in vv. 22b-23 reordered the actions according to
a more rational sequence. He realized that the order of the actions in the
section detailing the instructions is illogical. It is not clear why the
instructions to stand Joshua before Eleazar and the entire community are
only given in v. 19, following rather than preceding God’s instructions to
Moses to lean his hands upon Joshua. The scribe who added vv. 22b-23
placed the act of standing Joshua publicly before Eleazar and the entire
community earlier, prior to God’s instruction to Moses to lean his hands
upon Joshua. It would appear that the difficulty raised by the order of the
instructions regarding Joshua’s investiture in vv. 18-20 lay, amongst other
reasons, behind the addition of vv. 22b-23 (30). Thus v. 19 was already part
of the text in front of the second interpolator when he added vv. 22b-23.
In summary, a change in vocabulary occurs between the instructions in
v. 19 and the formulation in v. 22a, on the one hand, and the description of
the implementation of the command in vv. 22b-23 on the other. Moreover,
the translation of the verb hwx in v. 23 demonstrates that the translator
accurately understood the unusual signification of this root in its particular
context. In contrast, the stereotypical translation of this verb in v. 19
indicates that the translator of this verse did not comprehend the specific
meaning of the root hwx carries in this verse. These findings, combined with
additional literary-critical considerations, suggest that different translators
were involved in the translation of these two sections and that it is unlikely
that the first translator had vv. 22b-23 before him. Only once this section
(30) I hypothesized that v. 19 in its entirety was meant to be inserted before v. 18b,
prior to the instructions to Moses to lean his hands upon Joshua. It was initially written in
the margins of the text and subsequently mistakenly incorporated after v. 18b. It is not
feasible to argue that the instruction to stand Joshua before Eleazar the priest and the
entire community alone was intended to be placed before v. 18b and that in the Hebrew
text which lay before the second interpolator the order of instructions in vv. 18-19 (before
the second interpolator began his work) was in fact: Joshua’s standing before Eleazar and
the community, Moses’ leaning of his hands, and Joshua’s appointing as recorded in the
description of the implementation process in vv. 22b-23. The formulation of the
instructions regarding the commands to Joshua in v. 19 witnesses against such an
assumption. V. 19 states μhyny[l wta htywxw. The antecedents of the pronominal suffix of
μhyny[l are Eleazar and the entire community, who are referred to at the beginning of the
verse. The instructions regarding the appointing thus originally followed immediately
upon the instructions to stand Joshua before Eleazar the priest and the entire community,
and cannot be separated from one another.