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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Mighty
  • Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 10:18:33 EDT


Karl:

1. You wrote: “The Hebrew word is MDBR, normally translated as “desert”,
and from the history of Abraham the area around Beersheba was called a MDBR.


But of more relevance to this thread, there was plenty of MDBR in southern
hill country, yet the word MDBR is never used in Genesis in describing the
Patriarchs’ XBRWN. That’s because the Patriarchs’ XBRWN is the rural
paradise of the eastern Aijalon Valley. No one in the Patriarchal
narratives is
ever in rugged southern hill country.

2. You wrote: “Too bad you don’t know Hebrew, because “hurried” is
nowhere in the text.”

Both the JPS 1985 and Robert Alter’s translations use the word “hurried”
or “hastened” in translating Genesis 19: 27. E.A. Speiser uses the phrase “
hurried back”, and comments on this very issue [at p. 141 of his Anchor
Bible translation of Genesis (1962)] as follows:

“27. hurried back. Not ‘rose early (in the morning)’, which cannot be
construed with ‘to the place’, in any case; some such verb as ‘and
went/hastened’ is implied….”

And at p. 138 he says: “cf. 27, where the sense is ‘he proceeded promptly
’”.

So although the verb “hurried” is not explicitly in the text, it is
properly implied.

The Hebrew text does not fit your idea of Abraham simply walking to a ridge
near his tent at the Patriarchs’ XBRWN to see the destruction of Sodom.
No, Abraham has to “hasten” to a spot quite some distance from the “valley”
of the Patriarchs’ XBRWN. And then, per Genesis 20: 1, “from there”/M$M
Abraham will go on to GRR.

We know from Genesis 13: 4, 10-11 that from a mountaintop near Bethel, one
could see Sodom, and we know from the opening phrase of Genesis 13: 18 that
at Genesis 13: 14-17, Abraham is standing before YHWH at the mountaintop
near Bethel. So by following the Hebrew text closely, we see that Abraham
had
to leave the Patriarchs’ XBRWN [not returning until many years later, at the
time of Sarah’s death] to go to Bethel to see Sodom’s destruction.

3. You wrote: “Bethel is too far north to overlook Sodom and its sister
cities. The modern city of Hebron fits.”

Your view requires you to directly contradict what the Biblical text
clearly and unequivocally says. Here is the KJV translation of the relevant
portions of chapter 13 of Genesis, which make it very clear that the Sodom
area
could be seen from a mountaintop near Bethel:

“3 And he [Abram] went on his journeys from the South even to Beth-el, unto
the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth-el and Ai;
4 unto the place of the altar, which he had made there at the first; and
Abram called there on the name of the LORD. … 10 And Lot lifted up his eyes,
and beheld all the plain of the Jordan [KL KKR H-YRDN], that it was well
watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the
garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou goest unto Zoar. 11 So
Lot
chose him all the plain of the Jordan [KL KKR H-YRDN]; and Lot journeyed
east; and they separated themselves the one from the other. 12 Abram dwelt in
the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the Plain [KKR], and moved
his tent as far as Sodom.”

The text says that Lot saw KL KKR H-YRDN and how “well watered” it was,
that on such basis Lot chose KL KKR H-YRDN, that Lot henceforth dwelt in the
cities of the KKR, and that Lot “moved his tent as far as Sodom”. If Lot
couldn’t see the Sodom area from that mountaintop near Bethel, the text would
not make sense.

Out of context, the phrase KL KKR H-YRDN at Genesis 13: 10-11 would be
ambiguous. But I Kings 7: 46 clarifies that the KKR of the Jordan includes
the
area between Succoth and Zarethan. Succoth is near Penuel, well north of
the Dead Sea. Most importantly, Zarethan is near Rehov and Beth Shean in the
Jezreel Valley, as I Kings 4: 12 confirms: “Baana the son of Ahilud, in
Taanach, Megiddo, and all Beth-shean that is beside Zarethan below Jezreel,
and
from Beth-shean to Abel-meholah, as far as the other side of Jokmeam”. So
the KKR of the Jordan definitely includes the east end of the Jezreel
Valley, and Lot is stated to have seen “all”/KL of the KKR of the Jordan from
that mountaintop near Bethel. Lot sees the east end of the Jezreel Valley
from
that mountaintop near Bethel, and knows from having passed by there
recently that that is the richest part of Canaan [unlike the portion of the
Jordan
River Valley that is just north of the Dead Sea]. On that logical basis,
Lot proceeds to Sodom, with CDM being a Biblical nickname for the wondrously
fertile “fields”/%DYM at Rehov in the eastern Jezreel Valley.

Lot stakes his claim to the Jordan River Valley north of the Dead Sea, and
to the Jezreel Valley as its tributary [and indirectly to all of northern
Canaan], by walking straight east from Bethel to the Jordan River. By
sticking his foot in the Jordan River, Lot thereby claims the entire greater
Jordan
River Valley north of the Dead Sea.

Sodom cannot be southeast of the Dead Sea, because one cannot see that area
from a mountaintop near Bethel, and Lot would have known nothing about that
area, never having been there. By contrast, Lot and Abram have recently
traveled south down the Jordan River Valley [after leaving Harran in
Naharim],
and so Lot well knows that the richest land in all of Canaan, boasting both
great farming and international trade, is the Jezreel Valley, which
connects to the Jordan River Valley. Presumably urged on by his wife, it is
no
surprise that Lot claims the greater Jordan River Valley [including the
Jezreel
Valley] north of the Dead Sea. As shown above, the phrase KKR H-YRDN
focuses attention on the area that includes the eastern end of the Jezreel
Valley, which was the richest part of all of Canaan.

Karl, when you say that “Bethel is too far north to overlook Sodom and its
sister cities”, you are directly contradicting what the Biblical text says.
By contrast, my view of the underlying geography of the Patriarchal
narratives fits perfectly with what the Biblical text says.

No person in the Patriarchal narratives was ever southeast of the Dead Sea
or in southern hill country. N-e-v-e-r.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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