HoW TAMAR’S VEIL BECAME JoSEPH’S CoAT 163 that no better solution has been proposed. It is hoped that what follows here will provide a more satisfying explanation for the obscure phrase. I. Tamar’s ~ysp(h) tntk While it is common for scholars to focus primarily on Joseph’s better-known ~ysp(h) tntk, there is good reason for beginning instead with its other occurrence in the Hebrew Bible: the Tamar and Amnon story in 2 Samuel 13. The advantage of this attestation is that, unlike the Joseph narrative, it provides an explicit description of the gar- ment’s purpose. 2 Sam 13,18a reads: ~yly[m tlowtbh $lmh twnb !Xblt !k yk ~ysp tntk hyl[w And upon her [= Tamar] was a ~ysp tntk, for thus the virgin daughters of the king wore garments(?) 8. This clause is likely a scribal gloss added by a later hand 9, explaining the precise meaning of the phrase ~ysph tntk which will appear in the following verse. The reader will soon learn that Tamar tears her garment in response to Amnon’s assault, which may be con- fusing if one is unaware that the garment’s primary function was to in- dicate the sexual status of royal daughters. In the wake of Amnon’s rape, she would no longer qualify as a virgin daughter of the king, and so in her grief she dramatically rends her garment 10. It appears that a 8 The MT reads ~yliy[im. “garments” here (similarly, oG τοὺς ἐπενδύτας αὐτῶν, “their garments”, taking the final mem as a 3mp suffix), but this is syntactically awkward. J. Wellhausen (Der Text der Bücher Samuelis [Göttingen 1871] 187) suggested emending to ~l;,w™[me “from ancient times”. C. Klostermann (Die Bücher Samuelis und der Könige [Kurzgefaßter Kommentar zu den heilgen Schriften A:3; Nördlingen 1887] 187), followed by C. Conroy (Absalom Absalom: Narrative and Language in 2 Sam 13–20 [Rome 1978] 151-152), emends to ~ylil[. m o e “from child- hood on”. MCCARTER (II Samuel, 318-319) suggests emending either to ~Al['me or ~ymiWl['me “from puberty”. The precise meaning of the term fortunately makes little difference for the present discussion. 9 So WELLHAuSEN, Der Text der Bücher Samuelis, 187. on scribal glosses in the Hebrew Bible see G.R. DRIVER, “Glosses in the Hebrew Text of the old Testament”, L’ancien Testament et l’Orient (orBibLov 1; Louvain 1957) 123-161; M. FISHBANE, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (oxford 1985) 44-65; and M.A. SWEENEy, “Glosses, Textual”, ABD 2, 1032-1033. 10 That Tamar’s rending of her garments was due to her change in sexual status was already suggested by A.B. EHRLICH, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel 3 (Leipzig 1910) 302-303, and later by H.W. HERTzBERG, I & II Samuel (oTL; Philadelphia, PA 1964) 324. Cf. MCCARTER, II Samuel, 326, however, who believes that “the gesture can be explained sufficiently as an expression of grief”.