Jeffrey H. Tigay on Deuteronomy 32 :43

Deuteronomy 32:43

 

It is likely that divine beings were also eliminated from the text of verse 43. As noted in the Commentary, three different versions of this verse are known—the Masoretic text, the Qumran text, and the Septuagint—and it is possible that none of them reflects the original version exactly. The Masoretic text is almost certainly incomplete since the first and fourth colons, unlike any others in the poem, lack parallel colons. These are supplied in the Qumran manuscript and the Septuagint, which have, respectively, three and four pairs of colons, or bicolons. Here are the three texts, with the bicolons designated by letters and their component colons by numbers:

 

	Masoretic Text	4QDeutq	Septuagint
a1.	O nations, rejoice His people	O heavens, rejoice with Him	O heavens, rejoice with Him
a2.		Bow to Him, all divinities	Bow to Him, all sons of the divine.
a3.			O nations, rejoice with His people
a4.			And let all angels of the divine strengthen themselves in Him.
b1.	For He’ll avenge the blood of His servants,	For He’ll avenge the blood of His sons,	For He’ll avenge the blood of His sons,
b2.			Be vengeful
	And wreak vengeance	And wreak vengeance	And wreak vengeance and recompense justice
	on His foes,	on His foes,	on His foes,
c1.		Requite those who reject Him,	Requite those who reject Him,
c2.	And will	And will	And the Lord will
	cleanse His people’s land.	cleanse His people’s land.	cleanse His people’s land.

 

In the Qumran and Septuagint texts, every colon has a parallel: a1 is parallel to a2 (and, in the Septuagint, a3 // a4), and the colons in b and c are chiastically parallel (b1 // c2 and b2 // c1). Since the rest of the poem consists almost entirely of parallelistic bicolons, the original text of the verse probably had a structure like this.

 

The most notable colon in these texts is a2, “Bow to Him, all divinities” (ʾelohim; the Septuagint reflects a virtually synonymous reading “sons of the divine [benei ʾelohim]”). It is identical to Psalm 97:7b and similar to Psalm 29:1, “Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the divine [benei ʾelim] … glory and strength … bow down to the Lord.” This colon was probably part of the original text, like the reading “sons of the divine” in verse 8, and, like it, eliminated from the Masoretic text to prevent an angelological or polytheistic interpretation.

 

Most of the other differences between the three texts are probably due to the fact that they derived from alternative versions of the original, in which the same ideas were expressed in slightly different ways. It was common for slightly different versions of a text to develop as it was transmitted; there are, for example, similar differences between 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18, which are alternative versions of the same poem. In the present case, in colon a1 the alternatives were “heavens” and “nations,” and in bi “sons” or “servants.¹⁶ The Septuagint’s colons a3–a4 are to be explained the same way; they are simply a variant of a1–a2. They are probably based on a Hebrew text that originally read “O nations, rejoice with Him, / Let all sons of the divine [benei ʾelohim] exult,” but had become corrupted to “O nations, rejoice with His people, / Let all sons of the divine strengthen themselves in Him.” “With Him” became “with His people” by dittography: ʿ-m-v, “with Him,” was miswritten as ʿ-mʿ-m-v, “with His people.” “Exult” probably became the awkward “strengthen themselves in Him” by a transposition of letters: the original reading was probably v-y-ʿl-v-z-v, “let them exult,” which was miscopied, or misread, as v-y-ʿ-z-v l-v, “let them be strong to Him.” “Angels of the divine” in a4 is a variant translation of a2’s benei ʾelohim, “sons of the divine”; the Septuagint commonly uses either “angels of the divine” or “sons of the divine” for the Hebrew phrase (see ). This translation indicates that a3–a4 were translated into Greek by someone other than the person who translated a1–a2; it is unlikely that a single translator would have rendered the same phrase differently in the same context. All this implies that a scribe/editor of the Septuagint found an extra copy of Haʾazinu in Greek that contained a variant version of a1–a2, based—without his realizing it—on a corrupt Hebrew text, and added it to the text as a3–a4.

 

The absence of colon c1 can be explained by haplography—the scribe’s eye skipping from the vav at the beginning of c1 to that at the beginning of c2.

 

Textual changes of the type found in verses 8 and 43 were part of a process that is reflected elsewhere in the Bible. Psalm 29:1, “Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the divine” (benei ʾelim),” is revised in Psalm 96:7 (and in 1 Chron. 16:28) to read “Ascribe to the Lord, O families of peoples.” The revision of 4:19 in the Septuagint, according to rabbinic tradition, was also motivated by concern over polytheistic misinterpretation of the text. Personal names in the Bible were sometimes revised for the same reason. According to the Book of Chronicles, several individuals, including members of the family and associates of David and Solomon, had names containing the element Baal, such as Eshbaal and Beeliada (Baaliada). In the Masoretic text of the Book of Samuel, however, all these names were revised, becoming Ish-bosheth, Eliada, and the like.²³ Apparently the word baʿal, literally “lord,” was once considerered a legitimate epithet of God, like its synonym ʾadon, and was used as such in personal names. Later, however, when the cult of the Canaanite storm god, who was also called baʿal, became a serious threat in Israel, the epithet was shunned, and manuscripts mentioning such names were revised to avoid giving the impression that Saul and David had honored the Canaanite god. The Masoretic text of the Book of Samuel derives from manuscripts that underwent such revision, whereas that of Chronicles does not.

 

Such revisions were not made systematically throughout the Bible. There were varying attitudes toward such passages. References to the ʾelohim (divinities) in God’s retinue were not inherently problematic since ʾelohim, in addition to its use for “God” and for pagan gods, sometimes meant angel, as noted above. Since the term had this innocuous meaning, it was allowed to remain in many biblical passages, such as Psalm 97:7, cited above, and 4QDeut^q. The same is true of the synonymous ʾel, benei ʾelim, and benei ʾelohim, as in Psalm 29:1; Job 1–2; and 4QDeut^j, cited above, as well as Deuteronomy 3:24, “You whose powerful deeds no divinity [ʾel] in heaven or on earth can equal”; Exodus 15:11, “Who is like You, O Lord, among the divinities” (ʾelim); and the strange story about the benei ʾelohim in Genesis 6:1–4. It is not always clear why a particular reference was preserved or revised. The case of Deuteronomy 32:8 is understandable, since the original reading seems to imply that God shares His authority with other divine beings. But it is not clear why the account of marriage between benei ʾelohim and humans in Genesis 6:1–4 was allowed to remain. Nor is it clear why Deuteronomy 32:43 was revised when an identical phrase was preserved in Psalm 97:7. The inconsistent treatment of these references, and of names with the element baʿal, seems to imply that as individual books of the Bible were copied and recopied, the decision in each case depended on the judgment of individual scribes, or scribal schools, as to whether or not the reference might give rise to theological misunderstanding, and that such judgments varied depending on conditions in different times and places and the scribes’ personal, perhaps subjective evaluation of those conditions.

 

By rabbinic times, the text of the Bible was fixed and no longer subject to revision. Remaining passages that might be misunderstood were handled by interpretation instead of revision. For example, the benei ʾelohim of Genesis 6:2 were interpreted as sons of officials or judges, and the benei ʾelim in Exodus 15:11 were explained as “the mighty,” “those who minister to God in heaven,” and in other ways. The rabbis were probably unaware that the textual revisions discussed here had taken place. But they did believe that something similar had happened in other passages. There is a rabbinic tradition that several readings in the Masoretic text are the result of small corrections by the scribes (tikkunei soferim) to alter expressions that might seem disrespectful toward God. For example, they stated that “Abraham remained standing before the Lord” (Gen. 18:22) is a revision of “the Lord remained standing before Abraham,” which seemed to put God in a subservient position, and that “[Eli’s] sons scorned themselves” (la-hem, 1 Sam. 3:13) is a euphemistic correction of “scorned God” (ʾelohim, a reading reflected in the Septuagint). The assumption underlying this tradition—that the sanctity of the biblical text was not so inviolable as to risk disrespect for God—is very similar to the belief that must have motivated earlier scribes who made the revisions discussed here: the sanctity of the text is not so inviolable as to risk misleading people in ways that might compromise monotheism.

 

Source: Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 516-18.