Robert Alter on Ecclesiastes 2:3

  

not grasping folly. The Masoretic Text reads “grasping folly” (leʾehoz besikhlut), but this translation adopts a frequently proposed emendation, assuming that a scribe inadvertently dropped “not” (loʾ) in copying because it had the same two letters, lamed and aleph, that begin the next word, leʾehoz. The idea is that Qohelet gave himself over to drinking and revelry yet clung to his perspective of wisdom because his purpose in indulging the senses was to see if, indeed, that was part of “what is good for the sons of man that they should do under the heavens.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:682)

 

 

Robert Alter on Proverbs 27:16

  

Who conceals her conceals the wind, / and her name is called “right hand.” The Hebrew is unintelligible, as the translation indicates, and even with emendation it is hard to make sense of this verse. The “her” may refer to the nagging wife of the previous verse, in which case the idea is that it is impossible to hide her because she is everywhere. (The verb for the initial “conceals” is plural in the Hebrew but has been emended to a singular to accord with the second “conceals.”) The literal sense of the second verset in the received text is “and the oil of his right hand will call [or will be called],” weshemen yemino yiqraʾ. This has been emended, partly in accordance with the Septuagint, to read weshemah yamin yiqareiʾ. Even so, the meaning is unclear. Perhaps, by a stretch, it could mean, she is thought of as the right hand—that is, powerful—because there is no way to conceal or repress her. Amid all this confusion, Fox interestingly detects a pun: tsafan, “conceal,” suggests tsafon, “north”; and yamin, “right hand,” is an alternate term for “south.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:438)