Sunday, June 21, 2026

Robert Alter on Zephaniah 3:16

  

He renews His love. The Masoretic Text reads yaḥarish beʾahavato, “He is silent in His love,” but it is unclear why the living God should be silent. The translation follows the reading of the Septuagint, which appears to have used a Hebrew text that showed yeḥadesh ʾahavato (the Hebrew graphemes for r and d being quite close). (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:1350)

 

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