Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT its.canterbury.ac.nz>]

B-Hebrewers,

I was looking at Exodus 20:5,6 which is where YHWH says he will visit
the iniquities of the fathers on the sons and show faithfulness to
those that love him. In all English translations I looked at, they have
interpreted the Hebrew to mean that the visiting of the iniquities will
continue for three and four *generations*. Now there appears to me to
be no word in the Hebrew corresponding to generations, so expect they
interpreted it from the form of the numbers. The numbers are
`al-shilleshim w`al-ribbe`im for the iniquity and la'alaphim for the
faithfulness.

To what degree are we certain that these are speaking of generations
and not simply a matter of a few versus thousands of descendants,
number of generations unspecified? Would we be within the boundaries of
acceptible translation practice if we left out the word generations
for both the three and four and the thousands?

Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of Canterbury  \_ 
E-Mail b dot rea at its dot canterbury dot ac dot nz                 </   New 
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