CHAPTER 27
'to grasp, seize', and the noun "hzh derived from it, 'what is possessed, held', i.e. 'company'.? verses 32-3.
LXX madea mistake, having read: 'and they said, We have not (/6) found water' rather than what is in the Hebrew: 'and they said to him (/6), We have found water'. Jerome rightly points out that their translation is devoid of sense for a literal or an allegorical interpretation of the verse.> Indeed, if the discovery of the wells refers spiritually to Abraham's increase in virtues, then
LXX's statement that this well had no water is utterly incredible. By contrast with Jerome's simple and logical appeal to the Hebrew,
Augustine's attempts to justify LXX lead him into all manner of mental contortions, OG 78.
'And he called its name Abundance' does not render the Hebrew, which Jerome otherwise follows here. MT has: 'And he called it sibah'. This form of the word, spelled with shin, is unique in the Bible, occurring here as the proper name of the well; and it may mean 'oath', as LXX took it. On the meaning of Beer-Sheba, and the play on words involved, see above, comments on 21: 30-1. But to explain the Hebrew Jerome went to Aquila and Symmachus, both of whom seem to have taken the first root letter of SibGh not as shin, but as sin (which sounds almost exactly like samech), so that the word can be derived from root $b' 'to be satisfied'. There are indeed nouns sdba', sibah, 'abundance', soba@h, 'satiety', and Sabd, 'plenty'; and this last he put in Vg. Jerome comments again on this word at 41: 29; In Esa. 18. 65: 15-16; and In Hier. 3. 51. 1.
CHAPTER 27 verse 11 See Jerome's comment on 25: 25. 'Behold' is not found in LXX, but in the Hebrew. verse 15 LXX have the singular 'robe'; Jerome has given the Hebrew with plural 'garments', in common with Aquila. For the first-born functioning as priests in pre-Aaronic times, see comments on 14: 18-19. That Esau's garments were the priestly robes is a tradition found (e.g.) in jer. Meg.
Toledot 12, 2 See Rahmer, Die hebriischen Traditionen, 42. R. Nehemiah's words in Gen.
Rab. 64: 9, syb mn rbmwy, closely resemble TN, sy' mn rbmwy.
3 For Jerome's use of the term 'allegory' and its meaning, see the discussion in Jay, L'Exégése de saint Jéréme, 217-26.
Commentary Aggadath Bere'shith 42, although other sources such as Num. Rab.
4: 8 tell how Esau's vicious character debarred him from priestly service. It was also believed that these garments had belonged to the First Man: the tradition that they were priestly vestments stood alongside another, that they were royal robes, and that Nimrod had once possessed them. Jerome says nothing of this here, although his account of the pre-Aaronic priesthood in Ep. 72 is more detailed.
Early Christian writers showed keen interest in the latter; and Jerome is a key witness to the antiquity of the Haggadah found attached to this verse of Scripture.! Esau's 'robe', as LXX have it, was regarded as symbolic of the Old Testament, and a prefigurement of the Church: see Ambrose, De Jac. 2. 9. verse 36 Esau here comments on the name Jacob, Hebrew ya*qab, by referring to the verb 'qd, 'to follow at the heel, to overreach' and thus 'to supplant, trip up'; Lib. Heb. Nom. (pp. 67, 157) understands it as 'supplanter' and (p. 136) 'one who supplants'. The Hebrew hasa rhetorical question, 'is his name called Jacob... .?', which both LXX and TO make into a statement. This chapter has told how Jacob, with his mother's help, had deceived Esau and cheated him of Isaac's blessing (27: 5-29). Jerome here says that Jacob deceived Esau by cunning ('arte deceperit'): TO of this verse, along with Gen. Rab. 67: 4 and the vast majority of Rabbinic commentators, go out of their way to avoid this, and speak instead of Jacob having acted 'in wisdom', 'cleverly'.2 But TN translated literally, using root 'gb; and PJ comes close to Jerome's interpretation with 'he has defrauded me'. But there is also the word Ggéb,
'heel', to be considered, for Gen. 25: 26 tells how Jacob was born grasping hold of Esau's heel; not unnaturally, Jerome links the two scriptural passages. verse 40 Since Jewish exegesis of Jerome's day saw in Esau a codename for the Roman Empire, it is hardly surprising that this verse, which prophesies Jacob's rule over Esau, presented problems and opportunities for commentators both Jewish and Christian.' It is therefore remarkable that Jerome is so brief in what he has to say.
' For analysis of this Haggadah in its various forms, see C. T. R. Hayward, 'The Date of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Some Comments', JJS 40 (1989), 16-18.
2 See Grossfeld, Targum Ongelos to Genesis, 101.
3 See the literature cited at ch. 9 n. 4 above, and on this verse in particular, C. T.
R. Hayward, 'A Portrait of the Wicked Esau in the Targum of Codex Neofiti x', in The Aramaic Bible, ed. D.R.G. Beattie and M.J. McNamara (Sheffield, 1994), 300303.
He regards the sense of LXX as incomplete, and sets against it the Hebrew, which reads: 'And you shall serve your brother; and it shall come to pass that, when you wander (tdrid), you shall break his yoke from upon your neck.' The opening translation is presumably meant to represent this Hebrew, and here he translates tarid as depones, literally 'you shall lay down'; and gives the second verb as solves, 'you shall break'. In the light of what Jerome says, we should probably best construe his translation as meaning: 'and it shall happen, when you lay it down, then you shall break his yoke from off your neck'.
His second rendering uses the future perfects deposueris, 'you shall have laid down' and solveris, 'you shall have broken' to translate LXX: this tense is used by Ambrose in his quotation of the verse (De Jac. 2. 13; Ep. 77. 4), and his version is almost identical with Jerome's second rendering. It most likely represents a form of VL. A literal rendering of it illustrates Jerome's point about its incompleteness: 'So when you shall have laid it down, and shall have broken his yoke from your neck.' It is probable that Jerome regarded VL as the real source of the problem.
He does not comment directly on the precise meaning of tarid.4
Rather, he translates it 'lay down' as XX had done, as if from root yrd, 'go down': PJ and Aquila had invoked the same root in their versions. In Vg, however, he translated it as 'shake off, discard'. But his words, 'they shall cast off the yoke of servitude from their neck and reject their dominion (imperium)', suggest that he may have known more about Jewish understandings of this verse than is apparent. Some exegetes took tarid as if from root rdh, 'to rule', to indicate the dominion and monarchical rule of one brother over another: see TN, and R. Jose bar Halafta in Gen. Rab. 67: 7, and what Jerome seems to have in mind here. Further, the expression
'yoke of servitude' is found exactly in TN and its gloss, FTP, and FTV of this verse.' And FTP, like Jerome, refers specifically to the Jews in this address to Esau: 'And by your weapons you shall live;
4 See Salvesen, Symmachus, 47-8.
> Thus TN reads: 'And by your sword you shall live, and before your brother you shall serve and be in servitude... but when the sons of Jacob forsake the commandments... you shall exercise dominion (tslt) over him and break off the yoke of servitude from your neck.' The verb $/t may refer to the exercise of kingly rule. For the meaning of imperium in Jerome's writings, see $. Fanning, 'Jerome's
Concepts of Empire', in L. Alexander (ed.), Images of Empire (Sheffield, 1991), 239-50.
Commentary and before your brothers the Jews you shall be serving...', a sentiment shared with the marginal gloss of TN. Although the Targums and the Midrashim which expound Gen. 27: 40 do not exactly coincide with Jerome's remarks, it is curious that both he and they use similar vocabulary, which is not explicit in the Hebrew
Bible, to give the sense of the verse.
CHAPTER 28 verse 19 Quoting verse 17, Jerome explains that Bethel means 'house of God', and that Jacob called the place by that name. For the meaning of the former name of the place, Luz, as 'nut' or 'almond', see also Gen. Rab. 69: 8. He is concerned to remove the misconception that the place had three names, Luz, Ulammaus, and Bethel, which LXX suggest: see Augustine, QG 85. The Hebrew reads: 'And he called the name of that place Bethel; whereas
(walam) Luz was the name of the city formerly (lari' $6ndah).'?LXX had perpetrated what Jerome calls an absurdity, by stating that the place was first called Ulammaus. In fact, they read Oulamlouz, and translated Bethel literally as 'house of God': Oulamlouz is their
Graecized transliteration of Hebrew "alam laz. VL has Ulamaus.'
While Jerome is right to point out that "alam means 'forecourt', he here follows Aquila (Petit, ii. 223; cf. p. 224, the comment of an unknown author) in thinking that it means 'formerly'. He says nothing of a different Hebrew word with exactly the same form, meaning 'however, but'. Jerome none the less knew this other sense of "ulam (see e.g. Vg of Exod. 9: 16), and he could have translated the Hebrew as 'but Luz was the name of the city formerly'. It may be that, in his eagerness to point out the LXX's mistake, he has adopted Aquila's reading, overlooking the fact that 'formerly' is expressed by lari S6ndah standing at the end of the sentence.* On the other hand, Jerome's words suggest another possible explanation of what was in his mind: since there is a word "alam which means
'forecourt', he may have thought of that word as having a spread of meanings deriving from its fundamental sense of 'what stands in front', that is, what is before or prior to some other thing: hence,
1 Wevers, pp. 273-4, enumerates a host of variant readings in witnesses to LXX.
They include oulammaus, lammaous, oulmaous, and oulambanous. The Greek tradition clearly experienced difficulty with the word.
2 See Burstein, 'La Compétence de Jéréme', 4-5.
'formerly'. Such a train of thought may have occurred to him as an explanation of Aquila's translation. He would then have omitted a translation of lari'sonah as redundant. Indeed, Aquila seems also to have omitted the last word of the Hebrew.2 LXX had made one composite word out of %#lam and luz, and Jerome seems to have been especially keen to distinguish these two words from one another.
CHAPTER 29 verse 27 Jerome's disagreement is with Josephus, Ant. 1. 302. He espouses common Jewish tradition that Jacob received Rachel as wife after seven days of marriage to Leah, the seven days being the period of the marriage feast.! Verse 30 is adduced to show that Jacob had, in fact, married Rachel. See also Jub. 28: 8; PJ, TN,
FTV, and GM (Klein, p. 43) of this verse; Augustine, OG 89; PRE 16: 2; 36: 3; jer. Ket. 1: 1; jer. MOQ 1. 80d; and Midrash Pss. 90. verse 32 The Hebrew of this verse states that Reuben's mother
Leah so called him because 'the Lord ra'ah, has seen my affliction'.
Jerome here derives the word from bén, 'son', and rdaah, 'see', as does Philo in Leg. All. x. 8x and De Somn. 2. 33. In Lib. Heb.
Nom. (p. 71) he explains it as either 'a son who sees', or 'one who sees in the midst', this last derived from ra'ah and from béyn,
'between'; the same work also has variant explanations of the name as an imperative, 'see the son!' (p. 77) and 'see in the midst!' (p.
160). verse 33 Simeon is here derived from the root 3m', 'to hear', interpreted by Jerome as 'hearing': see also Philo, De Ebr. 94 and De Somn. 2. 34. Lib. Heb. Nom. (p. 72) has this sense, to which it adds 'name of the dwelling', from Sém, 'name' and md'6n, 'dwelling'. The second explanation reappears in the same work (p. 77) along with 'he heard sadness' (cf. p. 160), as also 'one who hears or he heard sadness'
(p. 141). Jerome translates neither LXX nor Hebrew, and may be quoting from memory: his only concern is with the name Simeon. verse 34 The Bible uses yillaweh to explain Levi's name. It means
'he shall become attached, joined', which Aquila attempted to 3 See Field, i. 43.
' See also Pesh, and Geiger, Urschrift, 460.