Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

Hello all,

There seems to perhaps be some confusion in the responses to Chris  
W.'s original post. Here's the deal, just in case anybody has lost  
track or got turned around backwards:

The MT on this verse reads (in part obviously)
Unicode Hebrew: ואברהם עודנו עמד לפני יהוה
Transliterated: W)BRHM (WDNW (MD LPNY YHWH

This clause is marked in the Masorah as one of the "tiqqune soferim"  
or "corrections of the scribes," suggesting a different original  
reading, which would presumably have syntactically reversed )BRHM and  
YHWH. Here is my footnote about that issue from my book Dynamics of  
Diselection, p. 39 n. 14:

-- begin quotation --
Masoretic tradition marks 18:22 as containing one of the "corrections  
of the scribes." Ostensibly, the text originally read "Yahweh  
remained standing before Abraham," but was changed to its present  
reading out of a sense of piety or decorum. Gunkel (202) and Speiser  
(132, 134) accept the tradition and provide the putative original in  
their translations. However, Tov (66) warns against a naive aceptance  
of the tradition of the "corrections." This case seems particularly  
suspect in light of Gen 18:22 (Scullion:156). See Heard, 2000:41 n.  
37 for fuller discussion.
-- end quotation --

The cross-reference to the end is to the full footnote in my  
dissertation (Dynamics of Diselection is a revision thereof) and I'd  
be happy to reproduce that for the list on Monday if anybody wants to  
see it. The bibliographical references are of course to Gunkel's  
commentary on Genesis (the English translation published by Mercer),  
Speiser's Anchor Bible volume, and Tov's handbook on textual  
criticism (I think the 2nd ed. but it might be the 1st). I reproduced  
the footnote exactly as it appears in the book, but there is a typo  
there: "in light of Gen 18:22" should have read "in light of Gen  
19:27," which contains the phrase

Unicode: המקום אשר עמד שם את פני יהוה
Transliterated: HMQWM )$R (MD $M )T PNY YHWH

This verse is *not* marked in the Masorah as containing a "tiqqun  
soferim," even though it contains the same phrasing (just with the  
subject of (MD, that is, )BRHM, stated earlier in the sentence). Thus  
it would appear that the Masoretic mark in Gen 18:22 is probably a  
case of the Masoretes' imaginations playing tricks on them, so to  
speak, and both 18:22 and 19:27 originally read PNY YHWH as they now  
do rather than the imagined PNY )BRHM for 18:22.

I think the issue that might have sparked the Masoretes' interest is  
the notion, which one can derived (not without a little mental  
gymnastics) from 18:22, that by "remaining standing before YHWH,"  
Abraham somehow blocked YHWH's path to Sodom. Note that a couple of  
verses earlier, YHWH has stated an intention to go down to Sodom, and  
in v. 18:22a the other two men, YHWH's companions (later called  
"angels" in chap. 19) have gone on ahead, W)BRHM (WDNW (MD LPNY YHWH.  
Why didn't YHWH go on down to Sodom as planned? One might say,  
"because W)BRHM (WDNW (MD LPNY YHWH, blocking YHWH's way." Now  
conceptually it strains credulity to think that Abraham really could  
block YHWH's way, yet I think the possibility of such a conception  
might have been what occurred to the Masoretes and led to the marking  
of this verse as a tiqqun.

Chris H.

On Apr 30, 2005, at 8:13 AM, wattswestmaas wrote:

> GENESIS 18:22
>
> "the Lord yet stood before Abraham"  and "Abraham yet stood before  
> the Lord"
> the first sentence being substituted for the latter in the  
> masoretic notes.
>
> I do not understand why  the scribes would object to the first  
> rendering?
>
> Chris Watts.
>
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--
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Pepperdine University
Malibu, California 90263-4352
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info