Paul Lippia <\/b><\/p>\n
Dead Sea Scroll fragment<\/i><\/b>.<\/b><\/p>\n
For the student of the Bible, the story of Saul\u2019s first victory has always been problematic. A Dead Sea scroll of Samuel, released in the past decade, clears up the problem\u2014and shows that at least some of the textual emendations of the critical scholars are correct.<\/p>\n
The Received Text<\/b><\/p>\n
According to the received Hebrew text, which almost all English Bibles follow in translating this passage, 1 Samuel 10:24\u201311:2 reads:<\/p>\n
And Saul also went to his house in Giva, and the mighty whom God had touched in their hearts went with him. But the sons of no account said, \u201cHow will this one deliver us?\u201d And they despised him and didn\u2019t bring him a present. And he was as one dumb. And Nachash the Ammonite went up and encamped against Yavesh Gilad. And all the men of Yavesh said to Nachash, \u201cCut a covenant with us and we will serve you.\u201d But Nachash the Ammonite said to them, \u201cBy this I will cut with you, by gouging every right eye, and I will make it shame on all Israel.\u201d1 <\/p>\n
The first problem with this passage is the way it introduces Nachash. When a Biblical writer first makes reference to a king, the convention is that the writer introduces him by his name, his title, and the name of his territory or subjects. Subsequently, the writer can refer to him by his name alone or by his title alone or by a pronoun. The books of Samuel and Kings contain 20 examples of this practice.2 <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 5:4 (Autumn 1992) p. 110<\/p>\n
Since this passage introduces Nachash, we would expect it to say something like \u201cAnd Nachash, king of the children of Ammon, went up,\u201d instead of \u201cAnd Nachash the Ammonite went up.\u201d The Targum, the ancient Aramaic translation, does in fact say \u201cAnd Nachash, king of the children of Ammon, went up,\u201d but almost certainly this is owing to the translator\u2019s familiarity with the conventions of Biblical story telling and not to his familiarity with a Hebrew text that differs from ours.<\/p>\n
Unprecedented Severity<\/b><\/p>\n
The second problem with this passage involves the situation described by the plot: Nachash suddenly goes up and lays siege to a town outside his domain. (Yavesh-Gilad was in Israelite territory.) The men of Yavesh offer to cut a covenant with Nachash and to serve him. But instead of accepting their surrender and lifting the siege, Nachash imposes additional terms: \u201cBy this I will cut with you, by gouging every right eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where the problem lies. The severity of the terms of surrender that Nachash imposes on the newly conquered town is unprecedented. Bodily mutilation was a common enough practice in the ancient Middle East, but this punishment was reserved for covenant breakers and rebels. (Nebuchadnezzar, for instance, had King Zedekiah\u2019s eyes put out when Zedekiah\u2019s rebellion failed and he was apprehended.) Nachash is apparently so barbaric that even before making the covenant he wishes to inflict the punishment for breaking it. Such an action goes beyond all norms of behavior in the ancient world.<\/p>\n
But as the Biblical story continues, we find the writer depicting Nachash as having a sense of propriety after all.<\/p>\n
The elders of Yavesh said to him, \u201cLeave us seven days that we may send messengers throughout all the border of Israel, and if there is no one delivering us, we will come out to you\u201d (1 Sm 11:3).<\/p>\n
Nachash allows the elders of Yavesh this reprieve. Later, in 2 Samuel 10, we find that King David had diplomatic relations with King Nachash\u2014so the man was capable of playing by the rules.<\/p>\n
The Missing Paragraph<\/b><\/p>\n
The solution to these problems in style and content is that a paragraph of 53 Hebrew words was omitted from an early copy of the book of Samuel. Unfortunately, this copy was an ancestor of our Hebrew Bible. The omission occurred early enough to affect the copies from which the ancient translations were made. The Bible Flavius Josephus used was an exception, but until recently scholars attributed the account of Saul\u2019s victory over Nachash that Josephus gave in Antiquities<\/i> to an overactive imagination.<\/p>\n
We would not have known of the omission at the end of 1 Samuel 10:27 were it not for one of the Dead Sea scrolls found in Qumran cave number four. A portion of the text of this scroll (4QSama) quotes 1 Samuel 10:27; F. M. Cross divulged that portion in a scholarly article published in 1980.3 <\/p>\n
At this point I present an English translation of the words omitted from the received Hebrew Bible in 1 Samuel 10:27. Where 4QSama is physically damaged a likely reconstruction is offered within square brackets. The line numbers refer to the lines of the original fragment as published by Cross:<\/p>\n
Line 6<\/i> [And Na]chash, king of the children <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 5:4 (Autumn 1992) p. 111<\/p>\n
Cave 4 where the missing paragraph from the Book of Samuel was discovered in 1952<\/i><\/b>.<\/b><\/p>\n
of Ammon, was oppressing the children of Gad and the children of Reuben by force. And he gouged out a[ll] their Line 7<\/i> right [ey]es and put ter[ror and fear] upon [I]srael. And there was not left a man among the children of Israel bey[ond] Line 8<\/i> [the Jordan wh]o Nacha[sh, king] of the children of A[mm]on, did n[ot gou]ge every right eye. Only 7,000 men Line 9<\/i> [fled from] the children of Ammon and they came to [Ya]vesh-Gilad. And it came to pass after about a month. . .<\/p>\n
[the received Hebrew text resumes here, so despite the fragmentary condition of 4QSama, it can be reconstructed with little likelihood of error from this point on]<\/p>\n
.. . that Nachash the Ammonite went up and encamped against Yavesh [Gilad]. And all the men of Yavesh said to Nachash Line 10<\/i> [the Ammonite, \u201cCut] with [us a covenant and we shall be your servants.\u201d] Nachash [the Ammonite said t]o [the]m, \u201c[By this] I will c[ut with you.]\u201d<\/p>\n
The Problems Solved<\/b><\/p>\n
The text of 4QSama neatly solves the problems I have pointed out in our Bible\u2019s account of Saul\u2019s deliverance of Yavesh-Gilad. The first problem I mentioned was that Nachash is not introduced according to the usual manner of story telling. In the scroll, though, we see that Nachash is accorded the full introduction: \u201cAnd Nachash, king of the children of Ammon,. . .\u201d<\/p>\n
The part of the scroll that parallels chapter 11:1 in our Bible reads, as does our Bible, \u201cNachash the Ammonite.\u201d But by this point in 4QSama he has already been introduced and has been referred to by name a second time. Consequently, the use here of the abbreviated form is only to be expected.<\/p>\n
The second problem I pointed out in the text of our Bible was that the surrender terms Nachash demanded violated the international law of the time as we know it. But the scroll reveals that King Nachash did not pounce on Yavesh-Gilad out of the blue. He had ruled the tribes of Gad and Reuben, which resided in Ammonite territory. They had rebelled, and when he subdued them, he had the right eyes of the rebels put out. He had laid siege to Yavesh-Gilad because this town was harboring 7,000 of his rebellious <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 5:4 (Autumn 1992) p. 112<\/p>\n
subjects.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, Yavesh-Gilad was outside Nachash\u2019s territorial boundaries\u2014but he was chasing down runaways. Nachash insists on mutilating the citizens of Yavesh-Gilad because they have abetted the rebels. As accessories to the crime they deserve equal punishment. So, while gouging out the right eye seems to us excessive punishment, under the circumstances described in the omission, Nachash\u2019s surrender terms make sense. They were well within the legal framework of his time.<\/p>\n
In addition to clearing up the above problems in the received text of the Bible, 4QSama offers an improvement where most readers did not suspect a problem. The scroll shows that our Bible\u2019s expression \u201cas one dumb\u201d is the product of a couple of errors. The first was the confusion of the letter dalet<\/i> for the letter resh<\/i>, and the second, the running together of what originally were two words. Instead of the received text\u2019s kmḥrys̆, 4QSama reads kmw<\/i> ḥds̆\u2014\u201dafter about a month.\u201d As a matter of fact, the Greek translation of the Bible (the Septuagint) also says \u201cafter about a month\u201d (hōs meta mēna), as does Josephus\u2019s paraphrase (mēni d\u2019husteron).4 <\/p>\n
On the basis of these Greek texts certain 19th century critics correctly deduced that the Hebrew Bible the ancient Greek translator used must have read kmw ḥds̆, \u201cafter about a month\u201d (Thenius 1842; Welihausen 1871; Driver 1890). But, without 4QSama to confirm their intuition about kmḥrys̆ and to supply the subsequent omission (of which they were not aware), their claim to have reconstructed the original reading was rejected by some as a contrivance of corrupt reason. They were told to take the Bible\u2019s \u201cas one dumb\u201d just as it reads.<\/p>\n
So once again the Dead Sea scrolls have contributed to our understanding of what the original text of the Old Testament of our Bible must have read. And, incidentally, they have made it clear that in at least this instance, the critics\u2019 conjectural emendation was correct after all.<\/p>\n
Bibliography<\/b><\/p>\n
Cross, F.M.<\/p>\n
1980 The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses From 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamuela. In The Hebrew and Greek texts of Samuel<\/i>, ed. E. Tov (Jerusalem).<\/p>\n
1983 The Ammonite Oppression of the Tribes of Gad and Reuben: Missing Verses From 1 Samuel 11 Found in 4QSamuela. In History, Historiography and Interpretation<\/i>, eds. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem).<\/p>\n
Driver, S.R.<\/p>\n
1890 Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel<\/i> (Oxford).<\/p>\n
Thenius, O.<\/p>\n
1842 Die Bucher Samuels<\/i> (Leipzig).<\/p>\n
Wellhausen, J.<\/p>\n
1871 Der Text der Bucher Samuelis Untersucht<\/i> (Gottingen).<\/p>\n
(Reprinted with permission from Ministry<\/i> March 1991.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Lippia Dead Sea Scroll fragment. For the student of the Bible, the story of Saul\u2019s first victory has always been problematic. A Dead Sea scroll of Samuel, released in the past decade, clears up the problem\u2014and shows that at least some of the textual emendations of the critical scholars are correct. The Received Text … Continue reading “RECOVERED:<\/p>\n A LOST PORTION OF THE BOOK OF SAMUEL”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}