SYNOPSIS: God
blesses Abram and tells him to go with his family to a land that he
will show him, promising to make him a great nation. Abram obeys and
reaches Canaan, where he builds an altar and travels the length of the
land (north to south).
The third of the twelve sections (parashot) of Genesis marks in many ways the start of the story proper, after the extended prologue of the first eleven chapters, which comprise the two parashot of b'reshit and nóax. The initial passage of the new cycle and section which we will now read starts off with the words spoken by God in which Abram is likewise commanded to make a major move in his life and begin a new story, a new journey, a new destiny. The whole saga of Genesis revolves around this crucial moment, marked by these memorable words (12:1, NBIE): wayyómer elohim el avram lekh l'kha me'artz'kha umimmoladt'kha ummibbet avíkha el ha'áretz asher ar'ékka 'Our Lord spoke to Abram: Go [far] from the land where you were born / leave your father's house / [and go wandering] / to the land I will show you.' The meaningful words traditionally taken as the name for this parasha are לך לך lekh l'kha 'Go!', or as rendered in this English gloss of my Nawat translation, 'Go far.'
12:1 lekh l'kha
God's first speech to Abram begins with an imperative: lekh 'go!', from the irregular verb h-l-k 'to walk, to go.' The other word, l'kha 'to you', here reflexive ('to yourself'), is virtually untranslatable.
meartz'kha umimmoladt'kha
Lit. 'from your land (éretz) and your parentage (molédet)', and some commentators have worried over how to translate molédet here, but this is a hendiadys and does not really convey a conjunction of two things (*'your land and your ??') but simply 'the land of your kinspeople', or even just 'your family home.' Note that this text implies this was Haran (not Ur-Kasdim); see my notes on 11:28-31.
asher ar'ékka
The relative clause introduced by asher contains the verb ar'ékka 'I will show you', the hiphil (causative) of the verb r-'-h 'see', in the imperfect tense used as a future, with first-person-singular subject (a-) and suffixed second-person-singular-masculine object (-kha). Lit. 'I will cause you to see.'
12:2 w'e‛eskha... wa'avarekhkha wa'agadd'la...
These verbs are all in the imperfect, prefixed conjugation, with non-conversive w- (i.e. these are not to be read as perfects, *'I made...', *'I blessed...' etc.); the first two verbs have the object suffix -kha ('I will make you', 'I will bless you'), and the third has the untranslatable -a suffix which sometimes emphasises first-person imperfects.
l'goy gadol
The meaning of goy is 'nation.' In later books it sometimes is understood as '[foreign] nation', a meaning which was generalized in the Yiddish word goy, but this is evidently not the intrinsic sense of the BH word, as we see here. Speiser (EAS, p. 86) says that goy 'nation' should not be confused with ‛am 'people': "Unlike ‛am, goy requires a territorial base, since the concept is a political one." As for gadol this is ambiguous between 'big' and 'great' and there is absolutely no indication here of which is intended (or maybe both).
wa'agadd'la sh'mékha
'I will make your name great' with a verbal derivation from the same root g-d-l. In this case, where it is associated with shem 'name', the meaning is clearly 'great'. This illustrates the very frequent metaphorical or symbolic sense of shem which goes far beyond the literal notion of a 'designation.' (Funnily enough, God will, in the course of Abram's story, literally enlarge his name to Abraham too. I wonder whether that double entendre was intentional!)
wehye b'rakha
The imperative construction used here is striking: 'Be a blessing!' This is understood to mean: be a blessing [to others]. The meaning is confirmed by the words in v. 3, w'nivr'khu etc. (qv.). Speiser suggests that perhaps והיה should have been read as w'haya 'it will be' instead of wehye. Either way, it cannot literally mean 'and thou shalt be a blessing' (cf. KJV).
12:3 wa'avar'kha m'varkhékha um'qallelkha a'or
NBIE 'I will bless / whoever blesses you / and whoever speaks badly of you / I will curse.' Notice the chiasmus structure, ABBA. This type of blessing is found elsewhere, e.g. 'I will destroy your enemies' and so on, and was no doubt a conventional formula.
w'nivr'khu v'kha kol mishp'xot ha'adama
Again, imperfect tense with non-conversive w-. NBIE has: 'and through you will be blessed / all the communities of the world.' Actually the niphal (medio-passive) w'nivr'khu is slightly ambiguous and could be understood as either 'will be blessed' or 'will bless themselves'. In similar passages elsewhere the hitpael (reflexive) is found, e.g. (22:18) w'hitbarakhu, which commentators (CB, EAS) take to imply that the second sense was meant. Trad. mishp'xot is translated as 'families' but Speiser thinks this is a mistake, and suggests 'communities' in this context. Cf. 18:3.
12:4 b'tzeto mexaran
The text confirms that Abram was initially in Har(r)an at this point (see the notes at the end of the last passage).
12:5 wayyetz'u lalékhet ártza k'ná‛an wayyavóu ártza k'ná‛an
And now it is revealed that Abram's destination is Canaan.
12:6 ‛ad m'qom sh'khem, ‛ad elon more
I have already talked about the location of Shechem and other towns frequented by the patriarchs. Commentators seem uncertain about the reason for the word m'qom (the construct of maqom 'place'); perhaps there was a sanctuary there that was frequented by travellers. The town of Nablus (an Arabization of Neapolis, cf. Naples) is now where formerly Shechem was found. All we are able to say for sure about elon more 'the oak/terebinth of Moreh' is that there must have also been a famous special tree there. Regarding whether or not this is evidence for ancient tree-worship, see my comments here. Trad. it was called an oak, but modern evidence apparently suggests another kind of tree (see also the note on 18:1). The probable meaning of more is 'soothsayer, oracle.'
w'hakk'na‛ani az ba'áretz
The only reason that makes much sense for the text to tell us that when Abram reached Canaan it was inhabited by Canaanites is if, at the time when the story is being told, that is no longer the case. The same assumption is further reinforced by the choice to use the adverb az 'then' (as opposed to now!). In other words, this sentence is a historical footnote. These three words played a famous part in early biblical criticism since it undermines the belief that Moses personally wrote the whole of the Torah (since in his time Canaan was still full of Canaanites!). The early scholars found it troublesome, leading for example Abraham Ibn Ezra to make the discrete comment that "there is a mystery here, but the wise had best keep silent" (quoted in EAS, p. 87).
12:7 l'zar‛akha etten et ha'áretz hazot
With these five words, we have the first occurrence of one of the most often repeated statements by God in Genesis, who includes and expands upon this basic idea in all the patriarchal covenants: the promise to give (etten 'I shall give', future tense) the land of Canaan (ha'áretz hazot 'this land') to Abram's descendants (l'zar‛akha 'to your seed').
wayyíven sham mizbéax lYHWH hannir'eh elaw
The building by a patriarch of an altar to God after a theophany is another typical Genesis scene. Thus in this short scene we have a sort of template of standard acts which are typical semiotic units in the grammar of the narrative: patriarch arrives somewhere / God appears to patriarch and promises to give the land to his descendants / patriarch builds an altar to God. Concerning this form of worship (through a mizbéax 'altar'), EH notes that in the Genesis accounts the patriarchs' acts are always individual, and take place at altars which they themselves have built, whether it be custom-made for the occasion or constructed on a previous occasion when passing through the same place.
12:8 wayya‛teq missham hahára
The verb root ‛-t-q has several senses but in this use, in the hiphil, it means 'to move on.' Note hahára 'to the mountain' and other allative (where-to) expressions (e.g. ártza 'to the land', hannégba in v. 9) formed with the unstressed suffix -a.
wayyeT oholo
See note on 9:21.
miyyam, miqqédem
The BH terms for 'west' and 'east' in a Canaanite context are miyyam lit. 'seawards' and miqqédem 'to the front.' These terms might be compared to the Hawaiian use of makai and mauka, respectively.
wayyiqra b'shem YHWH
One assumes wayyiqra b'shem is a way of saying 'to worship.'
12:9 hannégba
To the south, which is often called négev (lit. 'dry land', i.e. the desertified area around Beersheba) in a Canaanite context. To continue with the Hawaiian analogy, this is like when Ewa is used in Honolulu to mean 'westward' (from their point of view).
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