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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?
  • Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:14:00 +0200

Dear Jim,

What's your point. Only a few of the commentaries and translations that you quoted actually called the people "slaves" or "servants". I agree that this interpretation is unsupported by the text. These people were obviously people who had attached themselves to Abraham and Sarah - sort of "fellow travelers". Whether they were relatives or not, and whether they served as guards or not is simply conjecture - the text does not say. The Hebrew says "hannephesh asher 'asu" - literally "the souls that they had made". The question is, why call them "souls" and not just "people" (anashim), and what does "made" mean. Assuming that Abraham and Sarah wer not proto-Frankensteins who "made souls", it seems to imply that these people had some sort of deeper connection to Abraham and Sarah. Traditional Jewish commentaries see them as people who Abraham and Sarah had "converted" to their belief in the One God. Perhaps, but that's also not what the text says.

Yigal Levin



----- Original Message ----- From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 3:35 PM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?



Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?
In the prior posts on this thread, we looked at the controversial word RK$
at Genesis 12: 5 (which means "transportable goods", and which arguably at
Genesis 12: 5 may focus on "luxury goods", in my view, as is clearly the focus
of the word RK$ in chapter 14 of Genesis).
A more conventional controversy regarding Genesis 12: 5 is the question of
whether that verse states that Abraham bought slaves in Harran, and brought
such slaves to Canaan. In my view, Abraham did not buy any slaves or servants
at Harran.
The nub of this question turns on the interpretation of the following two
Hebrew words at Genesis 12: 5:
nun-pe-shin/NP$/"nephesh": "souls"
ayin-sin-heh/(&H/"'asah": "gotten"
Genesis 12: 5 tells us that certain people came with Abraham and Lot from
Harran to Canaan, who almost certainly were not members of the immediate family
of Abraham or Lot: "the souls that they had gotten in Haran". Are these
people "slaves", who had been "bought" by Abraham and Lot in Harran? Or,
rather, are these people distant relatives of Abraham's father, whose families were
the social equals of Abraham's father's family, and who were on a long
caravan trip out to Mesopotamia with Abraham's father's family as security guards?
Here is the JPS1917 translation of Genesis 12: 5:
"And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their
substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran;
and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of
Canaan they came."
1. (a) Other translations of the key phrase "the souls that they had
gotten in Haran" are:
KJV: "the souls that they had gotten in Haran"
English Standard Version: "the people that they had acquired in Haran"
Darby: "the souls that they had obtained in Haran"
Young's Literal: "the persons that they have obtained in Charan"
American Standard Version: "the souls that they had gotten in Haran"
Robert Alter: "the folk they had bought in Haran" [Robert Alter
specifically comments that these people were "slaves".]
E.A. Speiser: "all the persons they had obtained in Haran" [Oddly enough,
in his long book E.A. Speiser makes no specific comment about Genesis 12: 5 at
all.]
Gerhard von Rad: "the persons that they had gotten in Haran" [Oddly enough,
in his long book Gerhard von Rad makes no specific comment about Genesis 12:
5 at all.]
Richard Elliott Friedman, "Commentary on the Torah" (2001): "the persons
whom they had gotten in Haran" [Oddly enough, in his long book Richard
Elliott Friedman makes no specific comment about Genesis 12: 5 at all.]
Gesenius: "the slaves which they had obtained in Haran"
(b) Note that several translators explicitly insist that the "souls" who
were "obtained" by Abraham and Lot are actually "slaves" whom Abraham and Lot
had "bought" in Harran. We will soon see, however, that such view does not
make sense.
(c) BDB explains NP$/"nephesh" as follows: "coll. for 'persons', in
enumerations…elsewhere only Gn 12: 5".
As to (&H/"'asah", BDB says: "acquire property of various kinds…Gn 12: 5".
The implication of that remark by BDB seems to be that the souls that
Abraham and Lot acquired in Harran were "property", i.e. slaves.
2. For the reasons that will now be discussed, the view that the "souls"
that Abraham and Lot had "gotten" in Harran are "slaves" (a type of
"property"), and that Abraham and Lot had "bought" these people in Harran, must be
rejected. First and foremost, NP$ does not mean "slaves", and (&H does not mean
"bought". Indeed, the fact that the literal meaning of NP$ is "souls" (or
"breathing") emphasizes the humanity and importance of these people.
Moreover, under no circumstances would Abraham and Lot be buying slaves in
Harran. If Abraham and Lot were being forced to migrate to Canaan from
Mesopotamia because of adverse economic circumstances (not my view), they would
certainly not be in position to be buying slaves at Harran. Alternatively, if
Abraham's father, Abraham and Lot were wealthy Mesopotamians who could afford
to buy slaves at Harran (also not my view), why then would they be wanting to
move to modest, unsophisticated Canaan?
On my controversial view, Abraham and his father's relatives have taken off
from their violence-prone ancestral homeland in northern Canaan/Lebanon to go
on a one-time caravan trip way out to Mesopotamia. On my view, Abraham and
Lot would certainly not be buying slaves in Harran, when their money (and
the money of all their many relatives who had helped finance this long caravan
expedition) had been used up buying luxury goods in Mesopotamia. They would
not have any ready cash again until such time as the luxury goods are sold in
Egypt. Abraham and Lot will be in position to acquire servants in Egypt,
after they have sold their valuable luxury commercial goods in Egypt at a very
high price. Genesis 12: 16 But until then, Abraham and Lot have no ability
or desire to be buying slaves, in my view.
As I see it, there simply is no scenario under which it would make sense for
Abraham and Lot to be buying slaves in Harran on the eve of traveling to
Canaan.
On the other hand, it appears that when Abraham and Lot got to Damascus,
near Canaan, a single servant came into Abraham's household, who may have been
age 15 regular years at the time. If, as I view the case to be, Abraham had
very few (if any) servants when he left Harran, that servant acquired on the
road in Damascus could quickly have become Abraham's main servant, as most of
Abraham's servants were acquired later, after Abraham had sold the RK$/luxury
commercial goods in Egypt. That servant obtained in Damascus is referenced
2½ regular years later (when the servant may be age 17½ regular years) at
Genesis 15: 2 as follows: "And Abram said: 'O Lord [Adon] GOD [YHWH], what wilt
Thou give me, seeing I go hence childless, and he that shall be possessor of
my house is Eliezer of Damascus?'" Genesis 15: 2 If Abraham had many slaves
or servants upon leaving Harran, it is unlikely that a servant acquired
thereafter in Damascus would so quickly have become Abraham's top servant.
Looking ahead, it is likely that after that same servant from Damascus has served
Abraham for 32½ regular years (and such servant may now be age 47 regular
years, while Abraham is an old man age 70 regular years), that servant is
referred to again in chapter 24 of Genesis, though this time not by name: "And
Abraham said unto his servant, the elder of his house, that ruled over all that
he had: 'Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh." Genesis 24: 2 At age
47, such servant from Damascus would be old enough, and would have served
Abraham long enough, to be "the elder of his house". But such servant would
also still be young enough to make the arduous trip out to Harran on the upper
Euphrates River to secure Rebekah as the ideal bride for Abraham's son and
sole heir, Isaac. (Everything always makes perfect sense in the Patriarchal
narratives, if we just think about it long enough.)
As I see it, Abraham had few if any servants upon leaving Harran, and
acquired only one servant (in Damascus), who quickly became Abraham's #1 servant,
on the long trip from Harran to southeastern Canaan.
In a later post, we can discuss who these "souls" were, over whom Abraham
and Lot obtained responsibility in Harran. In my view, they were not slaves,
servants, or indentured servants. As I see it, the reference at Genesis 12: 5
to living, breathing NP$/"nephesh"/"souls" is not a reference to slaves or
servants.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois



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