Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT ilink.nis.za>]

Bryan Rocine wrote:

> Hi, John,
>
> Thanks for your response!
>
> you wrote:
> > Dear Bryan,
>
> <snip>
> >
> >
> > For under-specification, I'd be interested in your view of who is the
> subject of the
> > verb "they pulled him up" in Gen 37:28.  To read Genesis 37-50 as a
> coherent whole,
> > "his brothers" must be the subject (Gen 45:4 seems to indicate that
> Judah's intention
> > to sell Joseph ws carried out), while the Midianites and Ishmaelites must
> be the same
> > or somehow overlapping (as in Judges 6-8).
> >
> > Why the "under-specification" here, which, as you say, "risks a
> (temporary)
> > mis-reading"?  A related question - why mix the Ishmaelites and
> Midianites (and
> > Medanites; 37:36)?
>
> good example of under-specification!  it's downright ambiguous.   and it's
> a good question because this passage is often cited as an example of poor
> splicing by the redactor.  one counter-argument to my "pragmatic
> under-specification" idea is that under-specification is not thematic, but
> poor editing.
>
> first, as to the subject of vayya`alu in 37:28:  i would lean toward the
> brothers as being the ones who draw out Jo and lift him because of your
> same consideration, plus, more locally, the brothers *must* be the subject
> of the next clause, "they sold..."  notice how, at the same time the
> subject is under-specified, the object, Jo, is over-specified.   but what
> is the effect of under-specifying the brothers?  it pushes them out of the
> spotlight and turns the event into a mere mechanism to get Jo to Egypt.
> thematically, i might suggest(though i feel like i'm reaching) that
> ultimately Jo is going to tell his brothers that they should not be angry
> with themselves, that it is not them who sent him to E but God.  therefore,
> the under-specification of the brothers as the senders of their brother to
> E is appropriate.  does it seem like reaching to you?

No, not necessarily, but I was more inclined to look at the
underspecification as obscuring the distinction between Joseph's older
brothers and the Midianites et al, in keeping with the fact that they
had blurred the moral distinction there should be between the sons of
the covenant and those outside of it (if you can't tell who is the
subject of the verb at first, perhaps it makes you pause and reflect
that they brothers are acting as you would expect the enemies of Israel
to act).  So maybe the underspecification just mixes up Joseph's
brothers with their "cousins" (actually putting them in a worse light
since the caravaneers were just "doing their job" and were not guilty of
something that is a capital offence in the law of Moses).

As for why the "unnecesary" complication of several groups, maybe just
to
highlight the diversity of peoples arrayed against Joseph.  Perhaps
significant because Joseph would be used to bring relief to a great
diversity of peoples as well.

Thanks for your input.

A related matter is the detail in which certain things are (or aren't)
narrated.  Paucity of detail seems to be the general practice, so
perhaps "overuse" of detail is an indicator of something significant
(maybe you would say "marked").  I think of the detail in which we are
told of how Joseph found his brothers (Gen 37:14-17).  Von Rad expressed
surprise at such detail in what he thought was a totally secondary part
of the story.  My feeling is that we are told of Joseph's chance
encounter with a stranger while wondering around looking for his
brothers at Shechem because, humanly speaking, he should not have been
able to find his brothers that day (a random search would probably take
quite a while to bring him to Dothan, more than ten miles farther from
home).  Thinking back on this from his slavery and then imprisonment,
Joseph could see that, no it wasn't by chance he ended up where he was,
but "God sent me here."

Other times we have omissions of information which, even given the
general practice of brevity of detail, seem to call for some
explanation.  E.g. Gen 12:10ff Abram goes down into Egypt, Pharaoh takes
Sarai into his harem, etc.  We are not told: (1) whether Pharaoh's
marriage was consummated with Sarai (2) how Pharaoh found out the reason
he was being plagued.  In the similar story (Genesis 20) something else
is left out which the reader would naturally want to know - why was
Abraham afraid for his life here, since Sarah has just described herself
as a wrinkled old lady (Gen 18:12 'axarey belothi hayethah li `ednah)?

Any thoughts (besides the "sloppy redactor" solution)?

A side note for your discussion with Randall "how does it taste" - I
note that Randall said "there is a tendency in hebrew to use the
suffix/definite tense for conditions that are "not true".  Answers a
question I had - why hayethah in Gen 18:12 for contrary to fact (from
Sarah's perspective) future?  But then the question is why is there this
tendency?  I recall being taught that Moran showed from Canaanite
glosses to the Amarna letters that there once was a suffix form which
was optative.  Any relevance?

Yours,

John Ronning

John Ronning