Biblia Sancta

1 Consequently Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not begotten children: but having an Egyptian handmaidan by the name of Agar, 2 said to her husband: Behold, the Lord has closed me up, so that I may not give birth. Go into my handmaidenm if perhaps in any way out of her I will beget sons. And he acquiesced with her intercession 3 ten years after she took Agar her Egyptian handmaiden to begin to dwell in the land of Canaan and she gave her as a wife to her husband. 4 He entered her. And she, seeing herself conceive, despised her mistress. 

5 And Sarai said to Abram: You act unjustly against me. I gave my handmaiden to you, who seeing that she has conceived has despised me: Let the Lord judge between me and you. 6 Abram answere: Behold, I affirm, your handmaid is in your hand, use her so that it pleases you. Consequently, Sarai striking against her, Agar went into exile.

7 And when the angel of the Lord found her near a font of water alone, which is on the road to Sur in the desert, 8 he said to her: Agar, handmaiden of Sarai, from where are you coming? And to where are you going?

She answered: I am fleeing from the face of my mistress Sarai.

9 And the angel of the Lord said to her: Return to your mistress, and humbe yourself beneath her hand. 10 And in return: Increasing, he said, I will increase your seed, and they will not be numbered in comparison with the multitude. 11 And thereafter: Behold, he said, you have conceived and you will bear a son and you will call his name Ismael, the Lord has heard your affliction. 12 He will be a wild man: his hand against all, and every hand against him: and out of all regions he will erect tabernacles against his brothers.

13 And she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her: you are God who has seen me. Indeed she said: Assuredly I have seen the behind of he who sees me.

14 For that reason she called the well That Well of the One Who Lives and Sees Me. This same is between Cades and Barad.

15 And Agar gave birth to Abram’s son; she called his name Ismael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Agar bore Ismael to him.

Theological notes

It’s a bit hard to read this without thinking of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which posits this scenario as institutionalized in a near-future dystopian United States. Doing my best to put this aside, Sarai does not come across well in this story, first treating Agar as property rather than a human being and then being consumed with jealousy when, as was presumably the plan, Agar becomes pregnant with a son from Abram. And yet God insists that Agar return to Sarai and submit to her abuse and the promised outcome, an uncountable multitude of descendents, but descendents who will be at war with everyone doesn’t seem all that great to modern ears and yet it was sufficient for Agar to comply, although I do wonder whether Agar was herself a bit nonplussed by God’s offer since I could have legitimately translated the end of v. 13 as “Assuredly I have seen the butt of he who sees me.”

1 And so these things having finished, a conversation was made by the Lord to Abram by means of a vision saying: Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your protector, and your reward is excessively great.

2 And Abram said to the Lord God, what will you give me? I will go without children, and the son of the overseer of my house, this Damascus Elieer. 3 And Abram added: Moreover you have not given me offspring; and behold my slave, he will be my heir.

4 And then the conversation was completed to him by God, saying: He will not be your heir, but he who will come frorth from your womb, you will have as heir alone. 5 And he led him outside, and said to him: Look up to heaven, and number the stars, if you can. And he said to him: This will be your seed,.

6 And Abram believed God, and it was considered by him to be equity.

7 And he said to him: I the Lord who led you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, so that I might give to you this land, and you would possess it. 

8 And he said to him: Lord God, from where can I know that I might be able to possess it?

9 And the Lord answered: Take, he said, to me, a three-year-old cow, and a three-year-old goad, and a three-year-old male sheep and a turtledove and a pigeon. 

10 He taking all this, cut them in half, and put both parts agasint themselves on both sides but the birds he did not divide. 11 And birds descended over the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. 12 And when the sun fell, a deep sleep came over Abram, and great dread and gloom assailed him. And it was said to him: You will know foreknowing because your seed will be strangers in a land not theirs, and they will subject them to slavery, and they will be afflicted forty years. 14 However I will judge the people for whom they serve and after this they will be led out with great wealth. 15 But you will go to your fathers in peace, your grave in goold old age. 16 Moreover they will return here in the fourth generation: Indeed the iniquities of the Amarrhites are not yet complete to the present time. 17 Therefore when the sun set, the dark glow was finished and a smoking oven appeared, and a flaming lamp passing between those divisions.

18 In that day the Lord planted his covenant with Abram sayingh I will give your seed this alnd by the river of Egypt to the great Euphrates river, 19 the Cineans, and the Cenezites, the Cadmonites, 20 and the Hethites, and the Parazites, the Raphaim also, 21 and the Amarrhites, and the Chanaanintes, and the Gergesites, and the Jebusites.

Theological notes

One of many promises God makes about the future land of the descendants of Abram. The terrain here is pretty vast reaching from modern-day Iraq to the Nile river, but presumably part of that is for the descendants of Ishmael. Certainly, in the context of current geopolitics in the Middle East, expansive understandings of God’s territorial promise are a bit problematic.

Linguistic notes

I’ve finally gotten around to checking about something I’ve seen a lot in Jerome but also in the medieval Latin primer I’m currently reading, where qui and its relatives seems to be used as a pronoun rather than an interrogative. None of my dictionaries acknowledge this, but a useful answer at Latin Stack Exchange offers this commentary:

The distinction between relative, demonstrative/personal, possessive, and interrogative 3rd-person pronouns is relatively recent, such that e.g. Homer still often uses what is to us the article as a relative pronoun, and the relative as a possessive.

In Latin, too, the relative pronoun developed relatively recently (probably around late prehistory), out of a demonstrative or interrogative qui. At first this qui was always used interrogatively, or demonstratively with some subordinating or similar conjunction or particle, but then later it came be used alone as a subordinating pronoun (relative pronoun).

My other interesting note is the use of vernaculus to mean “slave” in 15:3, which apparently was the original meaning of the term rather than the more common idea of it being related to the common (non-liturgical speech). Wiktionary, which I tend to rely on as my primary dictionary these days, only mentions the slave meaning in a parenthetical, but include a link to Lewis and Short which gives it as the primary definition.

In 15:4 Jerome uses utero (uterus) where the Hebrew has מִמֵּעֶיךָ which is normally translated bowels or gut, which kind of indicates that Abram was going to shit out his heirs, which I guess is why Jerome went with the less scatological but also less anatomicall correct uterus. The Septuagint, meanwhile, simply says that the heir would come out of you (ἐξελεύσεται) without specifying a body part.

1 Moreover, in that time it happened that Amraphel the king of Sennaar, and Arioch the king of Pontus, and Chodorlahomor the king of the Elamites, and Thadal the king of the gentiles 2 began a war against Bara, king of Sodom, and against Sennaab king of Adama, and against Semeber king of Seboim, and against Bala, who is Segor. 3 All these assembled into the Silvestre Valley, which now is a salt sea. 

4 Verily, for twelve years they served Chodorlahomor, and in the thirteenth year they withdrew from him. 5 Consequently in the forteenth year, Chodorlahomor came, and the kings who were with him; and they killed Raphaim in Asteroth Carnaim, and Zuzim with him, and Emim in Save-Cariathaim, 6 And Charræos in Mount Seir, all the way to the plains of Pharan, which are in the desert.

7 And they had returned and they came to the spring of Misphat, that is Cades, and they killed everyone of the region of Amalek, and Amorrha who swelled in Asason-Thamar. 8 And the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrha, and the king of Adam, and the King of Seboim and also the King of Bale, which is Segor, went out; and they laid out a battle line against them in the Valley of Silvestrus. 9 That is to say against Chodorlahomor the king of Elemita, and Thadal the king of Gentium, and Amraphel the king of Senaar, and Arioch the king of Pontus: four kings against five.

10 Moreover the valley of Silvestris had many pits of bitumin. Therefore the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrha, turned back and they were defeated in battle there; and those who had remained behind, fled to the mountain. 11 Moreover they took all the fortune of Sodom, and of Gomorrha, and all which belonged to the sustenance and they departed; 12 And also even Lot and his possessions, the son of the brother of Abram, who lived in Sodom. 13 And behold one who escaped, announced to Abram the Hebrew who lived in the Mambre valley of Amorrha, the brother of Essod and the brother of Amer; indeed these had settled a pact with Abram.

14 Which when Abram heard. Lot his brother evidently was captured, he counted out his native soldiers as three-hundred and eighteen; and he pursued up to Dan. 15 And the allies being divided, he rushed in over them at night; and killed them, and he pursued them all the way to Hoba, which is to the left of Damascus. 16 And he brought back al the belongings, and Lot his brother with his belongings, likewise women and people. 17 Moreover the king of Sodom went out into his meeting, after he returned from the defeat of Chodorlahomor, and the king who was with him in the Save Valley, which is the valley of the king.

18 And truly Melchisadech, the king of Salem, offering bread and wine, was indeed a priest of God most high, 19 He blessed him and said: Blessed is Abram by the elevated God who created heaven and earth; 20 And blessed is the elevated God, by whom protecting armies are in your hand. And he gave him a tenth out of everything.

21 Moreover the king of Sodom said to Abram: Give to us the souls remaining to take for you.

22 He answered him: I lift my hand to the Lord the elevated God possessor of heaven and hearth, 23 Which by a thread of yours in keeping with the lace of a boot I will not accept out of all which is yours, do not say : I Abram am enriched.

24 This being received, which which the youths had consumed, and by the share of the men, who came with me, Aner, Escol, and Mambre; these accepted their shares.

Linguistic notes

Jerome’s Latin gets a bit elliptical here and while I generally try to preserve the grammatical structure of the Latin as much as possible, there were a few cases where I felt compelled to insert a few missing words for the translation to make sense.

Theological notes

The natural thing to do here is to go after Melchisadech, an odd appearance out of nowhere who subsequently disappears, but to be honest, most of the kings here are mysterious entities as is the whole war at hand. It is worth noting that Abram is a bit more than the humble shepherd that we tend to think of, being able to raise a significant army to rescue his nephew.

Speaking of which, it’s worth noting that the relationship between Lot and Abram is described as both the son of Abram’s brother and also Abram’s brother, following the Hebrew original. It’s worth noting that the contemporary terms we have for consanguinity tend not to have exact analogs in classical languages. The Latin nepos, for example, can mean any of nephew/niece and also grandson/granddaughter and descendant. The Hebrew אַחְיָן is a post-Biblical coinage and we see instead both brother and son of my brother for the relationship as here. Score one for the Mary-ever-virgin apologists vs the brothers and sisters of Jesus.

1 Therefore Abram went up out of Egypt, he and his wife, and all which he had, and Lot with him, to the southern region. 2 Moreover he was an exceedingly wealthy man in possession of gold and silver. 3 And he returned by the route by which he came, from the south into Bethel, all the way to the place where previously he had set up the tabernacle between Bethel and Hai 4 in the place of the altar which he had made previously, and invoked the name of the Lord.

5 But also Lot who was with Abram, had flocks of sheep, and draft animals, and tabernacles. 6 Nor was the land able to hold them, so that they might dwell together; because there was their great wealth, and they could not dwell together.

7 Whence also strife happened between the pastors of the flocks of Abram and Lot. Moreover in that time, the Chanaanites and Phareazites dwelled in the land. 8 Therefore Abram said to Lot: I beg in order that there not be strife between me and you, and between my pastors and your pastors, we are indeed brothers. 9 Behold the whole land is before you; depart from me, I intreat; if to the left you go, I will have the right; if you choose the right, I will proceed to the left.

10 Therefore Lot lifting his eyes, saw everything near the region of the Jordan, which was all irrigated before the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha, like the orchard of the Lord, and like Egypt coming into Segor. 11 And Lot chose for himself the region near the Jordan, and withdrew from the East; and both were divided from his brother.

12 Abram dwelled in the land of Chanaan; Lot truly lingered in the towns, which were near the Jordan, and he dwelled in Sodom. 13 Moreover the men of Sodom were the worst, and excessively sinners before the Lord.

14 And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot was separated from him: Lift up your eyes, and see the place, in which you are near, to the north and south, and east and west. All the land, which you observe, I will give to you and your descendants in eternity. 16 And I will make your seed like the dust of the earth; if some man can number the dust of the earth, likewise he can number your seed. 17 Rise, and walk the land in its length, and in its breadth; which I am about to give to you.

18 Abram therefore moving his tabernacle, came and dwelled by the valley of Manbue, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar to the Lord.

Linguistic notes

Jerome uses two different verbs to refer to lifting up eyes here. In 13:10, the word he chooses is elavatis (the ablative plural perfect passive participle of elevo), while in 13:14, the verb is leva (the second-person singular present active imperative of levo), and while elevo is derived from levo, there is nothing in the Hebrew original which uses the same verb in both contexts (נָשָׂא) to indicate that there is a cause to vary. Usually with these sorts of variations, it’s easy enough to mark it down as Jerome being Jerome—after all, he tends to vary the word he uses to translate the ו-connective that appears throughout the Hebrew Bible, but in this case, I think he may have been following the lead of the Septuagint which has two distinct verbs 

Theological notes

Lot had been largely absent from Abram’s story since the two of them and Sarai had left Ur for Chanaan. In the whole encounter with Pharaoh, there was no mention of Lot, but apparently he too was enriched by the sojourn in Egypt, so much so, that the two men each had too many followers for them to remain together. We also have our first glance at Sodom, which other than its inhabitants, comes across as a rather nice place. In fact, the word used to describe the area around Sodom and Gomorrha is the same as that used to describe Eden. It seems a terrible thing that the men of Sodom had been able to create such a beautiful place and then filled it with their sins.

1 Moreover the Lord said to Abram: Go forth out of your land, and from your kindred, and from the home of your father, and come into the land which I will show you. 2 And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will glorify your name, and you will be blessed. 3 I will bless those blessing you, and curse those cursing you, and IN YOU will be blessed the kindred of the whole Earth.

4 Therefore Abram went out as the Lord ordered him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old when he went out of Haran. 5 And he took Sarai his wife, and Lot the son of his brother, and all the property which they possessed, and the souls which they made in Haran; and they went out so they would go into the land of Chanaan. And when they came into it, 6 Abram passed through the land all the way to the place of Sichem, all the way to the shining ravine; moreover he was a Chanaanite in the land.

7 Moreover the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him: I will give this land to your offspring. He built there an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him. 8 And going from there to the mountain, which was to the East of Bethel, he set up his tabernacle there with Bethel to the West and Hai to the East, and also he built there an altar to the Lord and invoked his name.

 9 And Abram continued going, and furthermore progressing to the South. 10 Moreover hunger was made in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt, so that he could sojourn abroad there; indeed hunger settled in the land. 

11 And when he was ready to go into Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife: I know what a beautiful woman you are, 12 and that when the Egyptians will see you, they will say: She is  his wife; and they will kill me, and spare you. 13 Say, therefore, I implore you, that you are my sister, so that it might be well for me, because of you, and my soul lives on account of your grace.

14 When in this way Abram had entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw his wife who was excessively beautiful, 15 and the foremost  announced to Pharaoh, and praised her before him; and his wife  was taken away into the house of Pharaoh. 16 Indeed they employed Abram well on account of her, and there was to him sheep and cows, and donkeys, and slaves, and hand-maidens, and female asses and camels.

17 However, the Lord scourged Pharaoh with great plagues, and his home, because Sarai was the wife of Abram. 18 And Pharaoh called to Abram, and said to him: What is this which you have done to me? Why did you not reveal that she was your wife? 19 Why, did you say she was your sister, so that I took her to myself as a wife? Now therefore here is your spouse, take her, and go.

20 And Pharaoh ordered his men concerning Abram. And they sent him away, and his wife, and everything he had.

Linguistic notes

Nothing particularly knotty here, although I did get tangled up a bit in verse 3, where I misread benedicentibus tibi… maledicentibus tibi as phrases in the ablative absolute rather than seeing benedicentibus and maledicentibus as being dative objects of benedicam and maledicam.

Theological notes

This is the first of a number of trickster narratives that take place in Genesis (in fact this particular ruse of pretending that the wife is the sister will play out again between Isaac and Abimelech when we get to Chapter 26). There is some argument that Abram engages in this deceit because he doesn’t fully trust in God to protect him, but it seems that God is pretty complicit in the action, waiting until Abram has been endowed with livestock and slaves before scourging Pharaoh so that when Abram leaves Egypt, he leaves as a rich man, returning to a famished country.

1 Also, the land was of one lip, and of the same languages 2 and when they advanced out of the East, they found a field in the land of Sennaur and they lived in it. 3 And one said to the next: Come let us make bricks and dry them in fire. And they had bricks for stone and bitumen for cement; 4 and they said: Come, let us make a city for ourselves, and a tower, the roof of which will reach to heaven; and let us celebrate ourselves before we are divided in the whole Earth.

5 And God went down, so that he saw the city and the tower, which the sons of Adam were building, 6 and said: Behold the people are one, and one lip for all, and they began to make this, and they will not stop for their knowings, until by the work they complete their work. 7 Come, therefore, let us go down, and confuse their language, so they will not hear every single voice of their neighbors.

8 And the Lord divided them out of that place into all the lands, and they stopped building the city. 9 And for this reason, the name of it was called Babel, for there the lip of the whole Earth was confused and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all regions.

10 These are the generations of Sem: Sem was one-hundred years old when he begat Arphaxad, two years after the flood. 11 And Sem lived after he begat Arphaxad, five-hundred years, and he begat sons and daughters.

12 In turn Arphaxad lived three-hundred fifteen years, and he begat Sale. 13 And Arphaxad lived, after he begat Sale, three-hundred and three years; and he begat sons and daughters.

14 Sale also lived three-hundred years, and he begat Heber. 15 And Sale lived after he begat Heber, four-hundred and three years; and he begat sons and daughters.

16 Moreover Heber lived thirty-four years, and he begat Phaleg. 17 And Heber lived after he begat Phaleg, four-hundred and thirty years; and he begat sons and daughters.

18 Phaleg also lived thirty years, and begat Reu. 19 And Phaleg lived after he begat Reu, two-hundred and nine years; and he begat sons and daughters.

20 Moreover Reu lived thirty-two years, and begat Sarug. 21 Reu also lived after he begat Sarug, two-hundred and seven years, and he begat sons and daughters.

22 But Sarug lived thirty year, and begat Nachor. 23 And Sarug lived after he begat Nachor, two-hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. 

24 Moreover Nachor lived twenty-nine years, and begat Thare. 25 And Nachor lived after he begat Thare, two-hundred and nineteen years and begat sons and daughters.

26 And Thare lived seventy years and begat Abram, and Nachor, and Aran.

27 These are the generations of Thare. Thare begat Abram, Nachor and Aran. Aran in turn begat Lot. 28 Aram had died before Thane his father in the land of  his birth in Ur of the Chaldæans. 29 Moreover Abram and Nachor took wives: the name of the wife of Abram, Sarai, and the name of the wife of Nachor, Melcha, the daughter of Aram, the father of Melcha and the father of Jescha. 30 Moreover, Sarai was sterile, she did not have children.

31 Therefore, Thane took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Aram, the son of his son, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abram his son, and led them out from Ur of the Chaldæans, so they went into the land of Chanaan, and the came up to Haran and dwelled there. 32 And the days of Thare were two-hundred and fifty years, and he died in Haran.

Linguistic Notes

I left in vv. 1, 6 and 9, Jerome’s literal translation of the Hebrew idiom for language where, rather than writing tongue, they use the word for lip instead. It’s interesting that while Jerome was somewhat free in his translation in other places (his rotating among various options for translating the ו-connective being the most notable), here he was literal when a non-literal translation would be more sensible.

The other interesting thing (to me at least), was learning the idiom duco uxorem which is literally, lead a wife, but here I translate as take a wife (v. 29). I’d note that the original Hebrew verb here, יקח, translates as took as does the Greek verb in the same place λαμβάνω.¹

Theological Notes

The Tower of Babel feels like well-worn ground to me. The thing I found most interesting was noting that Nachor, the father of Lot, took his niece as his wife. It’s worth noting that the Mosaic law with its prohibitions on consanguineous marriages was not yet in effect at this point, so I guess it was fine (we’ll see another such instance coming up soon in the next chapter or so when we get to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah).

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1. I hadn’t really thought about the English idiom, to take a wife, before, but looking at other translations of λαμβάνω and יקח both verbs have alternative meanings of to seize or grasp and it occured to me that the idiom is rather violent in its language. Maybe duco is a better verb to refer to marriage in the grand scheme of things.

1 And God blessed Noë and his sons. And he said to them: increase, and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 And fear and trembling of you will be over every animal of the earth; and over all flying things of the sky, with everything which moves over the earth; all fish of the seas have been delivered to your hands. 3 And all which moves and lives, will be your food, as if I had delivered all flourishing plants to you; 4 Except, that you shall not eat meat with blood.

5 Truly I will require the blood of your souls from the hand of each beast; and from the hand of men, from the hand of a man and his brother, I will require the soul of men. 6 Whoever will shed human blood, his blood will be shed; since man is made in the image of God. 7 But increase and multiply, and go out over the earth, and fill it up.

9 Behold I will establish my agreement with you, and with your offspring after you, 10 and to every living soul, which is with you, so in birds as in beasts of burden, and all livestock of the earth, which has gone out from the ark, ad all the beasts of the earth. 11 I will establish my covenant with you, and never again will all flesh be destroyed by the waters of a flood, nor will there be another flood dispersing the Earth.

12 And God said this will be the sign of the pact which I give between myself and you, and to every living soul, which is with you in eternal begettings: 13 I will place my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and between the earth. 14 And when I cover heaven with clouds, my rainbow will appear in the clouds; 15 and I will remember my pact with you, and with all living souls which animate flesh, and there will be no great waters of a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 And the rainbow ill be in the clouds and I will see it, and I will remember the eternal covenant which is a pact between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth. 17 And God said to Noë: This will be a sign of the covenant which I have established between myself and all flesh on the Earth.

18 Accordingly the son of Noë who went out from the ark were Sem, Cham, and Japheth; in turn Chem himself is the father of Chanaan. 19 These three were the sons of Noë and from these were disseminated every kind of men over all the earth.

20 And Noë a farmer man began to work the land, and he planted wine; 21 And drinking the wine he became drunk, and was naked in his tent. 22 Which when Cham saw his father naked, he declared it to his two brothers outside. 23 And truly Sem and Japheth put a cloak on their shoulders, and moving backwards, they covered the awe-inspiring things of their father; and they turned away their faces, and did not see the manly things of their father.

24 While Noë was waking out of the wine, he learned what his younger son did to him. 

25 And cursed be Chanaan, He will be a slave of the slaves of his brothers. 26 And he said: Blessed is the Lord God of Sem, let Chanaan be his slave. 27 May God spread out Japheth, and may Sem live in tents, and may Chanaan be their slave.

28 Moreover Noë lived after the flood for three-hundred fifty years. 29 And all his days amounted to nine-hundred fifty years, and he died.

Linguistic Notes

Linguistically this is a rich chapter. There’s Jerome’s pun on of arcum/arca (bow/ark), but the thing that stuck out to me was in verse 23 where Jerome wrote “At vero Sem et Japheth pallium imposuerunt humeris suis, et incedentes retrorsum, operuerunt verenda patris sui: faciesque eorum aversae erant, et patris virilia non viderunt.” The original Hebrew has עֶרְוַת (nakedness)¹ here and also earlier in the verse which Jerome renders as first verenda (awe-inspiring [things]) and then virilia (manly [things])² but which, when it appeared in the preceding verse Jerome translated the word as nudata (naked). And again, we can’t blame this on the Septuagint which uses γύμνωσιν (nakedness) in all three instances. I can’t help but feel that Jerome was having a bit of fun with the language in this chapter.

Theological Notes

There’s a lot happening theologically in this chapter, which among other things inspired the theologically dubious claim that Black Africans are the sons of Chanaan slander that was used to justify slavery in the U.S. Perhaps more interesting is the covenant that God makes with humanity. The beginnings of kashrut appear here (with the prohibition on consuming blood) and law (a prohibition against murder), but perhaps most important is the promise that God makes to not destroy all life again with a flood. Alas, I’ve witnessed some bad takes on this, one—typical of my adolescence in the 1980s—was to ignore the promise not to destroy all life and take it as God’s will that the world be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust (I remember seeing the headline on an ad where theologians and anti-nuclear activists felt compelled to say that nuclear holocaust was not God’s will). The other is perhaps even more insidious, the belief among some self-proclaimed Christians that we don’t need to worry about things like environmental catastrophe (or more recently climate change) because of this covenant, ignoring the fact that just because God isn’t going to destroy all life doesn’t mean that humanity can’t. I suspect this is a lingering hangover of the belief in a static world/universe that was a mainstream belief up until the 18th and 19th centuries when the first paleontologists uncovered evidence of all manner of now-extinct species of flora and fauna indicating that the natural world is ever-changing in the past and will continue to change in the future.

Bonus post factum addition I recently heard an interview with Edward Tick where he mentioned that PTSD (not under that name, of course) appears throughout the Bible. Job was the obvious case, but I emailed him asking about other examples and he mentioned Noah as well and once you look at this part of the Noah story in that light, it becomes obvious. I’d gotten so used to the commonplace laughing at Noah alongside Chanaan that happens a lot when reading this story that I failed to view Noah with compassion and see him as a traumatized person (he had just witnessed the near-destruction of the world and surely among those who died were many people he loved) who used wine to self-medicate. Suddenly, the story of Chanaan becomes not one of dishonoring his father, but of failure to be compassionate in the face of suffering.

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1. According to Wiktionary, עֶרְוַת can also refer to a sexually forbidden relation in Jewish law, which makes Cham’s transgression have a greater significance.
2. In English, the Latin word has come to mean the male sexual organs.

1 But God having remembered Noë, and all the living things, and all the beasts of burden, which were within the ark, moved a wind over the earth and the waters were undefended. 2 And the springs of the abyss were closed. and the portcullis of heaven, and the rains from heaven were held back. 3 And the waters returned away from the earth, going and returning; and they began to diminish after one-hundred fifty days.

4 And the ark rested in the tenth month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on the mountains of Armenia.

5 And truly the waters went and dwindled after the tenth month; so in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the peaks of the mountains appeared. 6 And when forty days had passed, Noë opening a window of the ark, which he had made, sent a crow; 7 which left and did not return, until the waters of the earth were drained. 8 He sent likewise a dove after it, so it might see if already the waters over the face of the earth were held back. 9 When it did not discover where it could rest its feet, it returned to him in the ark; the waters indeed were over the whole earth; and he extended his hand, and he took it apprehended into the ark.

10 And having waited another seven days, again he sent the dove from the ark. 11 And it came to him in the evening, bearing in its mouth a living branch of an olive tree with leaves. Noë thus understood that the waters had been held back over the earth. 12 And he waited nevertheless another seven days; and sent the dove, which did not return again to him.

13 Consequently, in the six-hundred-and-first year, in the first month on th first day of the month, the waters over the earth were lessened: and Noë opened the roof of the ark, looked and saw that the top of the earth was dried up. 14 In the second month on the twenty-second day of the month the earth was dried up.

15 And God spoke to Noë, saying: 16 Go out from the ark, you and your wife, your sons and the wives of your sons with you. 17 Take out with you all the living things which are in your presence, out of all flesh as in the flying animals as in the beasts and all creeping animals which crawl over the earth and go into the earth: increase and multiply over it.

18 Therefore Noë went out, and his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. 19 But likewise the living things, the beasts of burdens, and the creeping animlas which crawl upon the earth, according to their own kind, went out from the ark.

20 And Noë built an altar to God and taking from all the clean cattle and winged animals, he offered burnt offerings on an altar. 21 And God made fragrant the odor of sweetness, and said: By no means will I curse the earth further for the sake of men; for the inclination and thoughts of man’s heart are inclined to evil from his youth; therefore I will not kill all living things, as I did. 22 In every day of the earth, sowing and harvest times, cold and hot times, summer and winter, night and day, will not stop.

Linguistic notes

The last word of this chapter in Latin is requiescent which may be familiar to English speakers as the first word of the phrase, requiescat in pace—commonly translated rest in peace. I was a bit intrigued about this word, and it’s worth noting that Lewis and Short give two definitions for the verb requiresco, either “to rest one’s self, to rest, to repose” or as a more poetic sense (and then usually in a transitive sense), “to let rest, to stop, to stay to arrest.” 

This is a bit odd. I decided to check the Hebrew and Greek. In the Septuagingt, the corresponding verb is καταπαύω which corresponds to the second sense, ”to make to cease completely“ but also has senses about making to rest. (Wiktionary, which has become my default Greek lexicon, doesn’t actually include καταπαύω, so I had to infer it from κατα- and παύω. I suppose I could have stood up to get my Liddell and Scott.)

The Hebrew word here is יִשְׁבֹּתוּ which is intriguing in that its radical, שבת, might be familiar to those who recognize Hebrew letters and for those who don’t let me give a transliteration: “shabbath”. The proffered definitions from Wiktionary are: “to stop working, to rest” or “to go on strike.”

I have to imagine that Jerome was intentional in his choice of requiesco for the verb here, and I wonder if there’s a deeper theological meaning as well, that there will be no Sabbath for the Earth for the rest of its days.

Theological notes

I find the statement that “the inclination and thoughts of man’s heart are inclined to evil from his youth” to be an intriguing statement about the innateness of sin in human nature, and this combined with the concluding clause of that sentence, “therefore I will not kill all living things, as I did” to be perhaps the central theological fact of the flood narrative. Much as is the case with the story of the fall from grace in Genesis 3, it seems that here rather than viewing this as an historical narrative, the important thing is to look for what it says about humanity and our relationship with God. Here God, is acknowledging our sinful nature and declaring that despite it, He will not punish us with mass extinction (although it seems that humanity is perfectly eager to pursue mass self-extinction without God’s assistance).