flee. The received text
has boteaḥ, “trust,” which does not work in the a fortiori relation of
the first verset to the second. An old exegetical tradition, going back to the
Aramaic Targum and several medieval commentaries and picked up by some modern
scholars, understands the verb to mean “fall,” which makes the meaning neat but
for which there is slim philological evidence. This translation adopts a
proposed emendation, reading boreaḥ, “flee,” instead of boteaḥ (Robert
Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2019], 2:901-2)
