CHAPTER 17
Ishmael as Saracens, and describes some of their customs and beliefs. Their lack of fixed dwellings, and their raids on settled peoples, often feature in these descriptions: see, for example, 25:
13-18; In Esa. 5. 21: 13-17, 17. 60: 6-7; In Hier. 1. 21, 2. 84; In Hiez. 8. 25: 1-7; In Gal. 2. 4: 25-6; Eps. 123. 13, 129. 4. He says they may be found in the region of Jerusalem, and some of his information tallies quite remarkably with details of Ishmael's descendants found in PJ and other Targums.*
CHAPTER 17 verses 4-5 LXX have: 'And God spoke to him saying, Even I, behold, my covenant is with you...'. LXX almost invariably translated Hebrew brit as diathéké, which may indeed mean
'covenant', but whose primary sense is 'will, testament'.! Jerome gives its meaning as either foedus, 'treaty', which he uses in Vg of this verse; or pactum, 'covenant'. A Jewish tradition that God took one letter be, H, from His own Name YHWH and added it to the name of Abram may be found in Midrash Aggadabh (ed. S. Buber,
Vienna, 1894) ii. 79; but a quite different statement is found in the name of R. Joshua b. Qorha in Gen. Rab. 47: 1, that God took the letter yodh from the name of Sarai (Hebrew §ry) and divided it: half was given to Abraham, the other half to Sarah. Yodh represents the number ten, and letter he represents five, half that number. Thus brm became brhm, and sry became srbh. Rahmer thinks that the tradition which Jerome records is inaccurate; but he was unaware of the passage in Midrash Aggadah, which had not then been published."
3 See also Gen. Rab. 45: 9, and the picture of Ishmael and his descendants as thieves, who would not accept the Torah because it contained the command not to steal: Sifre Deut. 343; PJ of Deut. 33: 2; Mekb. de R. Ishmael Babodesh 5: 74-8; Pes.
Rab. 21. On agreements between Jerome and PJ in descriptions of the Saracens, see C. T. R. Hayward, 'Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Anti-Islamic Polemic', JSS 34 (1989), 77-93.
1 For discussion of b*rit and detailed bibliography, see M. Weinfeld, s.v. 'berith', in TDOT ii. 253-79.
2 See Rahmer, Die hebraischen Traditionen, 28, and Kamesar, Jerome, 112 n. 53.
The latter also ('Thesis', 108) notes and contrasts Philo's interpretation of the change of Abram's name from 'uplifted father' to Abraham, 'elect father of sound';
De Cher. 7; De Mut. Nom. 66-76; De Gig. 62-4; De Abr. 82; OG 3. 43; and Ambrose, De Abr. 1. 27.
Commentary Jerome understands Abram here and in Lib. Heb. Nom. (p. 61) as 'high father', from 'ab 'father' and ram 'high', a view not so far removed from that of Philo.? He then follows biblical etymology in explaining the addition of the extra letter, and noting that 'nations' is not actually expressed in the new form of the name. But the new name Abraham ends in the consonants / and m, which suggest to Jerome the word h*mdén, 'multitude', itself part of the biblical explanation of the name.* The Hebrew and LXX state clearly that Abraham is thus constituted father of a multitude of peoples. See also In Esa. 17. 62: 4. In this comment, therefore, he modifies the interpretation of Abraham's name given previously in Lib. Heb.
Nom. (pp. 61, 134, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 161) as 'father seeing the people' and 'father seeing the multitude'.
His comments about the letter be are not, perhaps, crystal clear.
The LXX had expressed the change of name as from Abram to Abraam, necessarily so, since the Greek alphabet has no letter H as such. Rather than pointing this out, Jerome records that letter he
(H) may be written in Hebrew, but pronounced as A. This can, indeed, be the case; for this letter, although standing for the consonant H, may be used conventionally to represent the vowel long
A (especially at the end of a word), or even the vowel £. And his final remark would seem to mean that the letter aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, may be used conventionally and occasionally to indicate the presence of vowel E. In the beginning of his Lib. Heb. Nom. (p. 60), he sets out rather more clearly the problems arising from transliteration of Hebrew words which begin with guttural letters 'aleph, he, beth, and 'ayin. These letters do not exist in the Latin alphabet, and especially at the beginnings of words carry vowels, which are the sounds actually heard and reproduced. But they do not represent vowels: they may carry different vowel sounds both in initial and medial positions in words. Hence problems of transliteration into Greek and Latin would be inevitable. verse
LXX have: 'And God said to Abraam, As for Sara your wife, her name shall not be called Sara, but Sarra shall be her name.' Jerome's translation seems to follow the Hebrew: he reserves quotation of LXX for later in his comment. Sarai became
Sarah, but LXX, once more faced with the fact that the Greek 3 See Philo's works quoted in n. 2 above. For modern discussions of the names and bibliography, see R. E. Clements, s.v. "abhrabam' in TDOT i. 52-8.
4 See Kamesar, Jerome, 117. alphabet has no letter H, represented the changed name as SARRA.
Their procedure was not as arbitrary as it may seem, since in Greek the letter R is often aspirated as RH, especially at the beginnings of words. But Jerome was concerned about the exegesis of this changed name on the basis of R representing one hundred in Greek: it was used to suggest that Sarah now achieves a higher level of virtue. See Ambrose, De Abr. 2. 85; Justin, Dial. 113; and Didymus the Blind, Comm. in Gen. 114. 3-6. He insists that it is only proper that a Hebrew change of name should have a Hebrew explanation.
He gives this, noting first, and quite correctly, the change of consonants from the old to the new name: in his comments on the preceding section he has already explained how Hebrew he may represent vowel A.
Regarding the sense of the names, however, Jerome has affinity with Philo, who naturally followed LXX in representing the change from Sara to Sarra. Philo gives to Sara (Hebrew Sarai) the sense of 'my ruler' (see also Lib. Heb. Nom., p. 71); and to Sarra (Hebrew
Sarah) 'ruler' absolutely: see De Cher. 5, 7, 41; De Mut. Nom. 77; OG 3. 53; De Abr. 99; De Congr. 2. It seems odd that Jerome should agree with these explanations, based on the LXX which he has just criticized, until we note that they correspond in some degree with Rabbinic interpretations very likely current in his own day. Thus in b. Ber. 13a we are told: 'At the beginning she was only
Sarai, lady of a people; but at the end she was lady of the whole world.' Kamesar suggests that he may have used such a Rabbinic source. He notes Jerome's strong objection to the LXX account of the name change, because it is misleading philologically and leaves the new name without explanation, a point taken up by Augustine, De Civ. Dei 16. 28. Jerome is concerned to explain why she is 'ruler absolutely': and this the LXX form of her name cannot comprehend.° verse 16 Jerome quotes part of this verse, but then reverts to verse 15, which LLXX rendered as: 'And God said to Abraam, As for Sara your wife, her name shall not be called Sara, but Sarra shall be her name.' He then gives the original Hebrew and repeats part of his comment already made on that verse. Abraham himself is forbidden to address his wife any longer as Sara: he must use her new name, which Jerome takes to mean 'ruler' of all the nations.
5 Quoted by Rahmer, Die hebrdischen Traditionen, 27. See also t. Ber. 1, Sekbel Tov on Gen. 17: 16, and Gen. Rab. 47: 2.
6 See Kamesar, 'Thesis', 105-9.
Commentary What Jerome does not explicitly discuss is the Hebrew of this verse, which refers all the promises to Sarah: 'AndI shall bless her, and shall also give to you from her a son; and I shall bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come forth from her.'
His failure to tell of this is strange, given that it could only give powerful support to the comment he has just made about the meaning of Sarah's name, and that it constitutes further evidence that LXX have not properly appreciated the significance of that name.'
Indeed, LXX's translation is ambiguous: 'AndI shall bless ber and give to you a son from her; andI shall bless her [variant: him], and he [or: she] shall become nations, and kings of nations shall come forth from him.' There are even MSS of the version which render the Hebrew straightforwardly:' Philo seems to have been aware of both LXX readings, following the first for his OG 3. 54, and the second for his comments in De Mut. Nom. 148-51. Since this verse was taken by Christians as prophesying the Church, its interpretation was of some moment for them. If the promises are taken as referring to Sarah herself, then she may be regarded as a type of Mother Church, foreshadowing Mary the Mother of Christ; if, however, they are referred to her son Isaac, then the verse speaks of that 'seed of Abraham' (Gal. 3: 16; Rom. 4: 13) which is typical of Christ Himself. Jerome's comments seem to favour the first interpretation: but see also Theodoret, Ou. in 1 Reg. 3; Origen,
Some etymologists had evidently derived her first name from Hebrew sdara'at, 'leprosy', and Jerome refutes this. Although in Latin the words Sarah and sara'at may sound similar, the resulting bogus etymology is hardly valid for explanation of Hebrew names.'
7 Kamesar, Jerome, 115~16, argues on the basis of a variant in de Lagarde's apparatus of OHG that Jerome may in fact have read 'kings of peoples shall come forth from her', rather than 'from him', as all other witnesses read. Sarah will thus be 'ruler' absolutely as in the Hebrew of verse 16, and as in those MSS of LXX of this verse which read likewise: 'and I shall bless her, and she shall become nations, and kings of nations shall come forth from her': see Wevers, p. 180. Although
Jerome makes no explicit reference to any differences between LXX and Hebrew on this point, the fact that he so much stresses the Hebrew text throughout this discussion gives force to Kamesar's argument.
8 See further Harl, Bible d'Alexandrie, i. 171, citing the sources which follow.
° E. Burstein ('La Compétence de Jéréme en hébreu: Explication de certaines erreurs', REA 21 (1975), 5-6), following the text of QHG presented in CCSL 72, pp. 21~2, believes that Jerome reproduced the Hebrew word for 'leprosy' incorrectly as srt rather than srt. The text given in PL, however, has Jerome spell the word