16 August 2022 draft-bible
4. burial plot. Hebrew aḥuzzat-qeber. An aḥuzza is a possession, almost always an area of land owned by someone, though occasionally it may be used of other sorts of property. So ASV and WEB are not entirely wrong to read ‘possession’. And while qeber by itself might easily be translated ‘sepulchre’ or ‘tomb’ or even ‘burying-place’, as the nomen rectum of a construct phrase, it is practically an adjective.
10, 13. hearing. Hebrew ‘ears’, in both cases. But in 10, WEB changes ASV’s ‘audience’ to ‘hearing’, while in 13, WEB leaves ‘audience’.
15. silver. This was the primary form of money in the biblical world.
16. specified. Literally, spoken.
16. hearing. Literally, ‘ears’. Where WEB first read ‘hearing’ in verse 10, and ‘audience’ in verse 13, now WEB is back to ‘hearing’ again, for no apparent reason.
16. according to the current merchants’ standard. Hebrew ʿober la-soḥer, a difficult phrase that occurs only here. The most common interpretation I have seen is that it refers to the measurement of the shekels themselves – that they were in some way standardized, possibly according to the standard used by mechants specifically. Another interpretation, which can be found in the NAB, is that the expression means “at the current market value”, and thus would presumably refer to the price of the land itself.
18. the gate of his city. In the Hebrew Bible, the gate of a city is a typical place for legal transactions to be carried out. The presence of the witnesses gathered there would in effect ‘certify’ the legitimacy of whatever transaction was carried out, functioning rather like a notary or other official witnesses might today.
20. burial plot. As in verse 4.
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