Q&A: Differences in the Torah Text
Differences in the Torah Text
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently I came across an interesting textual difference in the book of Deuteronomy:
When the Most High gave nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of man, He set the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob the lot of His inheritance.
But according to the Qumran version and the reading reflected in the Septuagint, it should read like this: When the Most High gave nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of man, He set the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of God, for the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob the lot of His inheritance.
It seems that the Septuagint/Qumran reading makes more sense logically. According to the Masoretic text, the verse seems strange, because what connection is there between the number of the different nations in the world and the number of the children of Israel? Why would the Most High divide humanity into a number of different nations specifically corresponding to the number of the children of Israel? On the face of it, that’s an arbitrary number, whether it is 12, 70, or 600,000. But according to the Qumran/Septuagint reading, things seem more coherent: there is God Most High, who divides humanity into different nations according to the number of the sons of God (one nation for each god), while the Lord is one of the sons of God and He received the people of Israel and the Land of Israel as His portion and inheritance. In other words, the Lord is the patron god of Israel, but not the only one. That also fits with other verses in the Bible such as: “Who is like You among the gods, O Lord” (implying that the Lord is the best god among all the gods), “a jealous God” (implying that the Lord is jealous of the other gods if Israel serves them instead of Him), “For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever,” “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (implying that the Lord is our God and not the God of other nations), “The Lord alone guided him, and no foreign god was with him” (implying that the Lord alone led us in the wilderness, He and no one else among the other gods, and therefore we must be loyal to Him and not to other gods), “and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord” (implying that Egypt has other gods and the Lord can execute judgments upon them).
It is possible that an editorial change was made at a later stage that replaced the word “God” with “Israel” because of a gradual conceptual shift from polytheism to monotheism.
Although it is worth noting here the midrash in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, chapter 24:
Rabbi Shimon says: The Holy One, blessed be He, called to the seventy angels surrounding His glorious throne and said to them: Come, let us confuse their language. And from where do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, descended to them? As it is said, “Come, let us go down”; it does not say “I will go down,” but rather “let us go down.” And from where do we know that He cast lots among them? As it is said, “When the Most High gave nations their inheritance.” And the lot of the Holy One, blessed be He, fell upon Abraham and upon his seed [another version: his household], as it is said, “For the Lord’s portion is His people.” The Holy One, blessed be He, said: This portion and lot that fell to Me, My soul desired, as it is said, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” And the Holy One, blessed be He, descended, together with the seventy angels surrounding His glorious throne, and confused their language into seventy nations and seventy tongues, each and every one with its own nation, script, and language. And He appointed an angel over each and every nation [another version: language and language], and Israel fell to His portion and lot, and concerning this it is said, “For the Lord’s portion is His people.”
This midrash offers some more moderate interpretation of the matter, although in my opinion it is still somewhat forced.
In any case, what do you think is the significance of this textual difference? Which version do you think is more correct? And in general, how do you think one should relate to textual differences between the Masoretic text and other versions available to us?
Answer
As you know, I do not deal with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The various interpretations are possible, and one can raise considerations in both directions, and none of them is decisive. I have no way of knowing which text is more correct. I can also explain the text we have before us, and it does not seem unreasonable to me. For example, Midrash HaGadol explains that the number of the children of Israel is 70, those who went down to Egypt, corresponding to the seventy nations. But it is certainly possible that it underwent editing.
By the way, there are also the sons of God who came to the daughters of man at the beginning of Genesis.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know. If the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to Abraham, then I assume Abraham knew who was speaking to him. If it’s a mythical story, then that’s something else.
Assuming the text was edited, why do you think that editing was done? After all, if the source text of the Song of Ha’azinu is sacred, then it would be better to leave it as it is, and in any case the gates of interpretation were not locked. And if the source text is not sacred, then why not simply omit the whole thing and be done with it?
The way people do today: they adapt the text to the current agenda. It seems the editing too was done with divine inspiration.
But nowadays, adapting the text to the current agenda is done by way of interpretation and midrash, not by changing the wording.
As for editing with divine inspiration: if the pre-edited version is sacred, how could changing a sacred text into another version be done with divine inspiration? That would seem to be an improper act.
They definitely do change things, unfortunately. They did so even in sacred books and the like, until Rabbenu Tam’s enactment not to emend inside the book itself. And certainly in books by rabbis, whose students censor them in order to fit them to the agenda. Very common.
Even if there was censorship, it didn’t help. Nachmanides already realized that there are 70 divine beings (in his language, angels) appointed over each and every nation, even without the need for an explicit verse, as he explains in Deuteronomy 4:19:
“which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples” — for all of them have a star and constellation, and above them are angels on high, such as those mentioned in Daniel, the prince of the kingdom of Persia and the prince of the kingdom of Greece. Therefore they make gods of them and worship them. But He said, “But the Lord has taken you,” for you are the Lord’s portion; you are not to appoint over yourselves any prince or helper besides Him, for He brought you out of the iron furnace when you were in Egypt, a furnace of fire and wood, and brought you out from there against their princes, upon whom He executed judgments. Had He not cast them down, you would not have gone out, for they were in their power that you should not leave. And behold, He did all this so that you would be His inheritance and a treasured people for His great name among all the peoples.
You’re forgetting that the Torah was given in a reality where there were many idol worshipers. Even if in reality there aren’t many gods, there were a lot of people who worshiped particular idols. In other words, the Torah refers to gods that people worship. True, they don’t exist in reality, but they are gods that are actually worshiped. I think it’s pretty simple, and all the verses can be understood this way — that’s also the plain sense.
With God’s help, 5 Nisan 5782 (25 years since the passing of Professor Nehama Leibowitz)
“The sons of God” is a well-known designation for angels in the books of Daniel and Job. For example, in Job chapter 1: “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the Satan also came among them.” And likewise in Job: “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” And in Daniel chapter 3, when Nebuchadnezzar sees Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah saved in the fiery furnace, he describes the appearance of the angel with them: “and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods”; and similarly in the “Berikh Shemeh” passage in the Zohar: “and I do not rely on a son of the gods” [that is, not on an angel do I rely].
So no one would have needed to “correct” the Torah had it said “according to the number of the sons of God,” because it could have been interpreted as referring to angels, whose existence is mentioned in the Torah more than once. But there is no need to correct “according to the number of the children of Israel,” which is well explained in its plain sense: that the 70 nations formed in the section of Noah correspond to the 70 sons of Jacob, because the people of Israel are “the heart among the organs.”
Nor could one “correct” or “censor” the Masoretic text, which the scribes guarded like the apple of their eye, and which was studied by tens of thousands of students and read in thousands of synagogues all over the world, all of whom were careful to memorize and read the Torah text meticulously. Every child from the age of five and up devoted his whole day, including part of the night, to memorizing the twenty-four books of the Bible. Any attempt to “correct” it would have met resistance from all the Jewish communities in the diaspora.
By contrast, despite the meticulous care for the Torah text among the scribes and their students, there were circles that became so immersed in Hellenistic culture that the language of the Torah was forgotten by them, and they needed translations at second hand. There, the community “scholar” had freedom of action to “correct” whatever did not seem right to him, without resistance from the public, who were not really on top of the matter. So are we going to come, on the basis of the Hellenistic Jews and the sectarians of Qumran, and overturn the solid tradition?
The smart-aleck who decided to “correct” the expression “He set the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel” did not think of the idea that the 70 nations in the section of Noah correspond to the 70 sons of Jacob who came down to Egypt, because of the importance of the people of Israel, each one of whom is equivalent to an entire nation among the nations of the world. And when people don’t understand a text, they “correct” it unnecessarily.
Best regards, Yiftach Lahed Argamon-Bakshi
The “sons of God” in Genesis who came to the daughters of man can, in its plain sense, be interpreted as “the sons of the leaders, the mighty ones of the land,” since “elohim” in the language of the Torah is also a term for a “judge,” and perhaps by extension also for “the Judge of all the earth.”
Paragraph 4, line 1–2:
Instead of the meticulous care for the wording of the Torah among the scribes and their students — there were circles that had become immersed in Hellenistic culture to the point that…
The question is whether you think the monotheistic conception was known among the people of Israel from the very beginning, or whether it was an idea that developed gradually over the years.