Sunday, August 27, 2023

Yoram Hazony on Judges 18:30

  

In the seventh episode, there appears to be no judge in Israel at all, and we are told that “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” The Danites, unable to defeat the enemy that God has judged deserving of destruction, find a weaker, innocent people on the northern border of Israel, fall upon them, and destroy them instead. Their priest is a feckless man, a Levite who ministers to a statue fashioned from silver that becomes the idol of the tribe of Dan. The name of this purveyor of idolatry before a desperate tribe, we are told, is Yehonathan, son of Gershon—the grandson of Moses. (Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 147)

 

Judges 18:30. Look at the Hebrew text for this verse, in which the letter nun in the name “Menasheh” (מנשה) is suspended above the rest of the word; if this letter is ignored, the text reads “Mosheh” (משה)—Moses. That this is the intention is evident from the fact that Moses’ son was Gershon, a Levite, whereas Menasheh has no such son, and is not a Levite. (Ibid., 323 n. 54)