Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Karl:
 
1.  You wrote:  “Yet in that denial, you referenced information that at one 
time Saudi Arabia was forested, which brings up the question, when did 
those forests dry up?  Isaiah indicates that at least some of it was still in 
existence when he lived, ca. 700 BC.”
 
The scientific evidence is that northern Arabia has not had forests since 
the last Ice Age:
 
“During the last Ice Age, Saudi Arabia was wetter and cooler. A 
Mediterranean climate prevailed from Palestine to Yemen and across into the 
highlands 
of Ethiopia and Somalia. As the weather changed to its present, far warmer, 
condition, whole plant communities retreated to areas climatically capable of 
supporting them - to "islands" of cooler, wetter weather found at higher 
altitudes and separated by warmer, dryer valleys. Thus, honeysuckle and 
pistacia are no longer found anywhere between Taif and Palestine. That 
juniper 
species now has three distinct populations, isolated from each other - one in 
the 'Asir, one in the highlands of northern Oman, and the other confined to 
the mountains of Somalia and Ethiopia. Even in the 'Asir, juniper cannot be 
found below 1,800 meters altitude (5,900 feet), or more than five kilometers 
(three miles) inland.”
 
_http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198904/arabian.forests.htm_ 
(http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198904/arabian.forests.htm) 
 
2.  You wrote:  “Wrong again. He sent for Esau as a prophylactic, to 
prevent later conflict.”
 
The key passage is Genesis 32: 4 [Genesis 32: 3]:
 
“And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of 
Seir….”
 
Almost all the translations say “before him” or “ahead of him” or “ahead”
.  [Darby oddly says “before his face”, which is probably too literal a 
translation, though such a super-literal translation is nevertheless helpful.]
 
Karl, how are you translating this verse?  Doesn’t it say that Jacob sent 
messengers ahead, before him, to near the place where Jacob himself would 
soon need to travel?  How can you read it that Jacob sent messengers upwards 
of 
100 miles or so out of the way, way down south, south of the Dead Sea?  
Jacob was way up in northern Gilead, east of Shechem.  The point of sending 
the 
messengers was to get advance warning as to how Esau might react, so that 
Jacob could craft a plan to deal with Esau, if necessary.  Jacob  does  n-o-t 
 do this  “as a prophylactic, to prevent later conflict.”  On the 
contrary, the very minute that Jacob finds out that Esau means Jacob no 
physical 
harm, Jacob immediately takes his leave, and makes no attempt whatsoever to 
reconcile with Esau “to prevent later conflict”.
 
With all due respect, it seems to me that your reading is doing violence to 
what the text quite clearly says.  By contrast, on my view, if Seir is 
Shar/Jazer, located where Jazer was located later in the 1st millennium BCE, 
then the entire text reads naturally.  But if Seir is south of the Dead Sea, 
then the text has to be contorted to try to make it fit that geography.  
Jacob 
sent the messengers ahead of him, before him, to Seir/Shar/Jazer, knowing 
that Jacob’s entire large entourage would soon have to pass fairly close to 
Seir/Shar/Jazer in going to Shechem, so that Jacob could not possibly sneak 
that large entourage into Canaan without Esau hearing about it.  On my view 
of the historical geography, the text reads very naturally, and the story 
makes perfect sense.
 
I don’t quite understand why everyone is fighting so strongly to prevent 
the geography of the Patriarchal narratives from being historical.  If we go 
with historical geography, based on Bronze Age inscriptions (and ignore 
entirely both Ezra and the medieval pointing done in the Middle Ages), then 
the 
stories make perfect sense, and nothing in the text needs to be forced.  The 
story of Jacob sending messengers ahead to meet with Esau is a perfect 
example of what I’m talking about.  Genesis 32: 3, and Genesis 14: 6, both 
make 
perfect sense, both historically and textually, if and only if Seir is 
Shar/Jazer, located where Jazer was located in the 1st millennium BCE, in the 
well-wooded hill country of Gilead in the Transjordan, just east of the 
Jordan 
River, and not too far from either Shechem or Jerusalem.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois