CHAPTER 32
who gathers stones to be built up on the foundation of the prophets and Apostles with Christ as chief corner-stone: they are living stones, a spiritual house and holy priesthood (cf. Eph. 2: 19-22; 1
CHAPTER 32 verses 2~3 The Hebrew mahndyim is a dual form meaning 'two camps', and is found as a place-name elsewhere, e.g. Josh. 13: 26,
30; 2 Sam. 2: 8, 12; 1 Kgs. 2: 8. Jerome follows what seems to be the plain meaning of the biblical text, that the camps consist of angels: see also Augustine, OG rox. But the Targums PJ, TN, FTP,
FTV report that Jacob also considered the possibility that they might be troops sent by Esau or Laban to oppose him. Jerome may have been aware of this Targumic tradition, in that TN, FTP, and FTV state that the angels have been sent to rescue Jacob from Esau and Laban. But it should be noted that Eusebius of Emesa suggests that the angels were a proof of God's help for him against Esau
(Devreesse, p. 78). Of particular interest is his description of the angels as a chorus: the being who has dealings with Jacob later on in this chapter is one of the angels who praise God in song, according to TN, PJ, FIP, FTV, GM of verse 27. This tradition originated in pre-Rabbinic times, as LAB 18: 6 makes clear. It is found also in b. Hullin 91b; Gen. Rab. 78: 2; PRE 37: 2; and TN actually names the angel as Sariel, 'Prince of God'.! On Jacob as 'prince', see further the comments on verses 28~9 below. Origen,
Sel. in Gen. 32: 2, speaks of Christ as the Way, and of the angels as meeting such as follow that Way. His concerns are quite different from Jerome's in these verses. verses 10-14 'The sense of the Hebrew, which Jerome tries to capture here and in Vg, and which reads literally 'I am too little for all the mercies .. .', is: 'I am unworthy of all the mercies .. .'. The full translation of the Hebrew reads: 'And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, Return to your land and to your birthplace, and I shall do good
1 See G. Vermes, 'The Archangel Sariel:
A Targumic Parallel to the Dead Sea Scrolls', in J. Neusner (ed.), Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, pt. iii: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (Leiden, 1975), 159-76; id. 'The Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Jewish Studies', JJS 26 (1975), 12-14.
Commentary for you: I am unworthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which you have done for your servant.'
But the various witnesses of LXX' present a confused picture.
Thus we read: 'let there be for me sufficiency of all the justice . . .'; 'Iam satisfied with all the justice . . .'; or 'sufficient for me is all the justice ...'; and VL, for the most part, opted for the last of these renderings.? These translations distort the Hebrew and yield no proper sense. verses 28-9 Josephus, Ant. 1. 333, explained that God ordered
Jacob to call himself Israel: 'this, according to the language of the Hebrews, signifies one who opposes an angel of God.' Jerome, however, goes straight to the Hebrew, which explains the name with the words: 'because Sarita with God'. But what might this untranslated verb signify? Ancient translators had different opinions, such that Jerome's researches would need to be wide-ranging.
As first-fruits of these he quotes Aquila, who took the words to mean 'because you have ruled with God' on the basis of root srr, 'to rule, to be a prince' and '/, 'God'. Jerome adopts this explanation here: it is the basis of all the Targumic translations of this verse
(TO, PJ, TN, Ngl, GM), which speak of Jacob as prince (Hebrew Sar) or great one with God or his angels. Likewise, b. Hullin 32a says that Jacob was made a prince (Sar) over the angel. Jacob is therefore no longer 'the one who trips men up': see comments on 27: 36.
Symmachus translated Sarita as érx6, the second person singular aorist middle of archd, which means 'you have begun': he seems to have derived the word from the Aramaic root Sry, 'begin', to yield:
"because you have begun with God', It is possible that Symmachus chose the verb arch6 with the notion of 'rule' in mind; or that Jerome understood his rendering as suggesting 'rule'; or the form in which his reading has come down to us is corrupt: if that is so, then we may yoke his translation with Aquila's.? But whatever Jerome's understanding of him in this verse, Symmachus may still have interpreted Hebrew S4ritd as if it derived from Aramaic Sry, 'to begin', choosing the aorist middle form deliberately to give the sense of 'to begin a religious act' and translating Hebrew 'im, 'with', as pros, 'in relation to' God. If, as seems probable in the light of See Harl, Bible d'Alexandrie, i. 240-1, and Wevers, p. 310 for other variants and Aquila's version of the Hebrew, to which Jerome's is very similar.
3 See Kamesar, Jerome, 121-2. recent research, Symmachus was a Jew, then he probably knew traditions which related Jacob's change of name to divine promises about Israel's priesthood and sacral status encapsulated in this event.* Theodotion's 'because you have striven (or: prevailed) with God' is close to LXX and Pesh, which understood the word through root
Srr, 'to be hard, be firm'. This last Jerome also takes seriously, combining, it seems, the understanding of Israel as prince and as one who strives both with God and men. With this, we might compare Gen. Rab. 78: 3, You have wrestled with those above, and have prevailed over them; with those below, and you have prevailed over them. 'With those above'—this refers to the angel. R. Hama bar Hanina said: It was Esau's angel . .
. 'With those below and you have prevailed over them'—this refers to Esau and his troops. Another explanation of 'for you have ruled with God'—You are the one whose image is engraved above.
Theodoret, OG 93, also envisaged the events as encouragement for Jacob to confront Esau. In Vg, Jerome renders this verse as: 'For if against God you have been strong, how much the more shall you prevail against men!' He presents Jacob's partner here as God; but notes that there is disagreement among interpreters, and that an angel may be spoken of: such is the opinion of Eusebius of Emesa
(Devreesse, p. 78). This difference of opinion is evident even in Jewish tradition: TO can say of Jacob 'you are a prince before the Lord', while TN (cf. Ngl, GM) goes further in toning down the anthropomorphism of the original Hebrew with 'you have been superior over angels from before the Lord'.
When Jerome says that Sarith means 'prince', however, he interprets this verb as a noun, even though he has been quoting the Three who, without exception, translate the word as a verb. Given the use he has made of the Three and the comments which follow it seems highly unlikely that this note indicates a view of his own different from theirs, or even an attack on them.' Jerome is either
4 For Symmachus as a Jew, see above, n. 31 to the Commentary on the preface.
Jacob's change of name to Israel occurs at the same time and in the same place as Levi's appointment to the priesthood, while Jacob plans to build a temple, according to Jub. 32: 16-18. For the change of name associated with Israel's future priestly status, see also Philo, De Abr. 56; and PJ of Gen. 35: rz.
S$ See A. Butterweck, Jakobs Ringkampf am Jabbok (Judentum und Welt, 3; Frankfurt am Main, 1981), 185-6 (Jerome's comment owes nothing to the Three);
Commentary rather loosely giving the overall meaning of the word in a down-toearth fashion, or has been influenced by Rabbinic exegesis like b.
Hullin 92a cited above which interpreted the verb as 'he was made a prince'.® The meaning of Israel as 'a man, (or: mind) seeing God', noted in Lib. Heb. Nom. (pp. 75, 139, 152, 155), can be traced back to Philo: see, for example, Leg. All. 2. 3.4, 3. 15. Philo's influence was very great,' and his explanation of the name was followed by most
Christian scholars, as Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2. 20. 2, Paid.
1. 9. 57; Origen, De Prin. 4. 3, Hom. in Num. 11. 4. 73
Eusebius, Praep. Evang. 11. 6. 31; Basil, Comm. on Isaiah 15; Hilary, De Trin. 4. 31; and Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 78) can testify—to name but a few.' Jerome explains simply and clearly why, in terms of the Hebrew language, this etymology is incorrect.
But he did not consign this sense of the name to oblivion; years later he remarks that Israel might be understood as 'a man seeing God' not in terms of the actual letters making up the name, but in the way it sounds (In Esa. 12. 44: 1 ff.).
In passing, however, he refers to another possible meaning of the name Israel as 'most honest one of God' (cf. Lib. Heb. Nom., p.
139), thereby deriving it from root yér, 'to be straight, to be right', yielding the adjective yaSar, 'upright', and "él, 'God'. The clue to this explanation is found in Hos. 12: 2-4, where the prophet gives his own account of the naming of Israel. In 12: 3(4)-4(5) he paraphrases the Genesis story with the words sarah 'et 'elobim: wayydsar
'el mal'ak ..., which RSV translates as 'he strove with God. He and Miller, Mysterious Encounters, 215 n. 66 (Jerome criticizes the Three as well as Josephus and LXX).
6 For the latter explanation, see Kamesar, Jerome, 122, quoting b. Hullin 92a and Gen. Rab. 78: 3; see also Butterweck, Jakobs Ringkampf, 29, 186, who cites TO's rendering 'you are a prince before the Lord'.
7 For a convenient summary of passages in Philo where he treats of the name Israel, see the Loeb edition of his works, vol. x (Cambridge, Mass. and London,
1971), 3348 See also The Prayer of Joseph, fr. A, translated by J. Z. Smith in J. H.
Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ii (London, 1985), 713; for Smith's discussion of 'a man seeing God' and Christian use of it, and the episode recounted in Gen. 32, see ibid., pp. 703, 705~9. For a further list of authorities who followed this explanation so that it became a cliché, see Kamesar, Jerome, 119-20.
Years after having written QHG, in his commentary In Esa. 12. 44: rff., Jerome remarks that the name Israel sounds in pronunciation as if it were 'a man who sees
God', even though its spelling does not warrant the interpretation: see discussion by Jay, L'Exégése de saint Jéréme, 295-6. strove with the angel, and prevailed.' In Vg, however, Jerome took these words to mean, 'he was upright with the angel. And he prevailed over the angel...'. For the rendering of the first verb, there is little doubt that he followed Aquila (see Field, ii. 959-60), who translated both verbs as katérthdse, which has a basic sense of 'he was upright'.
Jerome records this meaning of the name at In Osee 3. 12: 2-6, and In Esa. 12. 44: 1 ff. In the latter, the name Israel is qualified by a rare description of the Jews as Jeshurun, which LXX translated as 'beloved' but which 'the rest' took as 'euthutatos, most upright'
(Field, ii. 519, on Isa. 44: 2). Jeshurun occurs also in Deut. 33: 5 in the expression 'and He was king in Jeshurun': once more LXX translated as 'beloved', but Symmachus and Theodotion (Field, i.
324-5) have en t6i euthei. Jerome, in Vg, translated as 'in the presence of the most upright'. Given the definition of Israel as Jeshurun, which is a scriptural datum, Jerome no doubt felt justified in proposing a further derivation of the name from root y$r, a proposal which the translations of the Three clearly substantiated.? verses 30-1 The Hebrew has p*niél, not p*ni'él, which is what
Jerome seems to have read here and in Vg in common with the Samaritan Pentateuch, TO, Symmachus, Pesh, and Josephus, Ant. t. 334. This latter form, as Jerome notes, is found elsewhere in Scripture: see Judg. 8: 8, 9, 17, and 1 Kgs. 12: 25. Scribal confusion of the vowel letters yodh and waw, representing long 1 and long u respectively, was fairly common; and it is also possible that the Hebrew text which Jerome knew had assimilated the reading of the word in this verse to the more common form Penuel found in the other biblical passages we have noted.
Jerome insists that Penuel is the name of a place, and in Lib. Loc.
914 he lists it under Fanuel as the place alongside the wadi Jabbok where Jacob wrestled and earned the name Israel: he says the word means 'the face of God' because it was there that Jacob saw God
(see also his Comm. in Esa. 3. 6: 1). For the meaning 'face of God', see also Lib. Heb. Nom. (pp. 66, 100, 140). Neither LXX nor VL had transliterated Peniel as a proper name: the former has eidos theou, which might mean 'the form, appearance, look, shape, figure of God', and the latter tries to reproduce these nuances.'° The way
? See also Jay, ibid.; Kamesar, Jerome, 123-5. For discussion of other passages in Jerome's works which refer to these verses, see Miller, Mysterious Encounters,
Commentary was open for Christian exegetes to refer this expression to Christ, who is the image of God: see Clement of Alexandria, Paid. 1. 57. 2; but Jerome appears to rule this out of order.
CHAPTER 33 verses 1-3 The Hebrew wayyabaz indeed means 'and he divided'; but the noun from this root, bgy, means 'a half', and Aquila has translated the verb accordingly. Jerome follows this, to argue that Jacob's company was in two groups, not three. He directs his remarks against writers such as Josephus (Ant. 1. 328-30), who envisaged a threefold division, with the two groups of Jacob's family preceded by an advance party bearing gifts. verse 17 The Hebrew reads: 'And Jacob journeyed to Sukkoth, and built a house for himself; and for his flocks he made booths (or: tents, Hebrew sukk6t). Therefore he called the name of the place
Sukkoth." LXX had reproduced this as: 'And Jacob departed to tents (skénai), and made there houses for himself; and for his flocks he made tents. Therefore he called the name of that place Tents.'
The name of the place is Sukkoth, which does indeed signify 'booths, tabernacles': see also Lib. Heb. Nom. (pp. 77, 85). The Book of Places has a reference to Sene, Lib. Loc. 967. This is presumably an error for Skenai, 'tents', which LXX read for Sukkoth in this verse. The entry is as follows: 'That is, tabernacles, the place where Jacob lived when he returned from Mesopotamia; which in the Hebrew language is called Soccoth.' In Vg at the end of this verse, Jerome puts the Hebrew name Soccoth, and adds 'that is, Tents'. verse 18 The city of Melchizedech was called Salem, according to Gen. 14: 18; and in his comments above on that verse (q.v.), as well as here, Jerome appears to accept the traditional Jewish identification of that place with Jerusalem. By contrast, in Ep. 73. 7 he tells of 'a town opposite Scythopolis which is called Salem up to this day; and Melchizedech's palace is shown there: it consists of a vast set of ruins, displaying the grandeur of the ancient construction.
Moreover, in the latter part of Genesis there is written concerning it: And Jacob crossed over into Salem.' The Lib. Loc. 966 is more complicated, and refers to one Salem as a city of the Shechemites,
'which is Shechem' (see also Ep. 73. 8); and to another Salem west Commentary of Aelia at the eighth milestone from Scythopolis: the latter is presumably the Salem spoken of in Ep. 73. 7. Finally, he refers to Josephus' identification of Salem, where Melchizedech was king, with Jerusalem.
Jerome here admits that there may be two or possibly more places called Shechem, and seems to stand aside from his earlier identification of this Salem with Jerusalem. But he notes that the word may be understood as a qualification of Shechem, since
Hebrew root S/m has connotations of 'whole, perfect, complete' on the one hand, and of 'peace' on the other. For the interpretation of the name Jerusalem with reference to peace, he had before him
Heb. 7: 2, which has influenced Lib. Heb. Nom. (pp. 72, 157). He explains that the meaning of the word depends on the vocalization of the root: thus 5além is 'whole, complete', while além is 'peace'.
The tradition that Jacob's thigh was healed here is found in Gen.
Rab. 79: 5; b. Shabb. 33b; Tanh. WayyiSlah 9. His thigh had been put out of joint after his encounter with the celestial being, a matter described earlier in Gen.
32. The Targums give a general description of his 'perfection' without specifying that his thigh was healed. Thus for PJ he came 'complete in respect all that was his'; for TN 'perfect in good deed'; and for TO 'safely'. In the Vg, however, Jerome retains Salem as the name of the place, the city of the Sichimites.'
CHAPTER 34 verses 20-1 The Hebrew has: 'There men are Slmym with us', meaning, as Rashi points out, both 'peaceable' (so LXX, Vg) and 'whole-hearted'. Aquila may have tried to reproduce this in his translation. Jerome refers to 33: 18; so does TN, by describing the men as 'perfect in good deed with us' (cf. GM of this verse). verse 25 The Hebrew word is betah, which properly means 'in security', as LXX and Pesh have rendered it; so also TO, PJ, and TN, 'in safety'. Vg has 'confidently', here put last of all as a possible rendering: it is also the translation of Aquila, and Jerome derives it from the root bth in its sense of 'trust, be confident'.
1 See also Rashi and Leqab Tov on this verse: the name of the city is Shechem, and Salem refers to Jacob. The verse is discussed by Rahmer, Die hebrdischen Traditionen, 43.