This page was originally written in June 2017. To navigate up to the Genesis index, see index-genesis.
August Dillmann’s commentary on Genesis, in two volumes, is available online. I haven’t yet seen a public domain commentary on Genesis that tackles its subject in such detail. It seems to come close to discussing every word with an uncertain meaning, and every phrase as well.
A typical layman’s English Bible is to such a commentary roughly as a neat little package of Vienna sausage is to a meat-packing plant. The tidy final product conceals a number of hard choices and messy complications that the average customer has little interest in seeing up close. But, if we really want to understand the phenomenon of sausage, we must familiarize ourselves with how the sausage is made. Consider this a peek inside a window, allowing you to see a glimpse at 1/929 of the process.
Our procedure today is as follows. I’ll take a facsimile of Dillmann’s commentary on Genesis, as translated into English in 1897 by William B. Stevenson. I won’t reproduce everything Dillmann says. In fact, I’ll throw out discussions of the hypothetical J, E. D, and P sources almost entirely, although the questions involved are certainly important. I’ll confine myself to points on which Dillmann expresses either uncertainty as to what is true, or disagreement with other scholars, or disagreements between early versions of Genesis, or the existence of meanings unclear to the reader of an English translation. I’ll drastically condense what he says, and leave out much of his reasoning. I’ll also freely transliterate, inconsistently. Hopefully this provides a rapid birds-eye view of what some of the issues involved in interpreting just one chapter of Genesis look like.
Verse 2. What does “And be a blessing” mean? Dillmann assigns it multiple meanings simultaneously.
Verse 3. Should wnbrkw bk be understood as reflexive or passive? “Most modern expositors” go with the reflexive option: i.e. “will bless themselves” or “will bless one another.” Or is a meaning of “count one’s self fortunate” better? Dillmann argues against the passive interpretation “be blessed by/through you.”
Verse 4. Does Genesis claim that Abraham left his homeland while his father was still alive?
Verse 4. What is the route of Abraham’s travel. Dillmann suggests, in Knobel’s words, that “In all probability Abram journeyed by way of Damascus.”
Verse 6. Dillmann says that the word place implies a cultic significance.
Verse 6. Is the elon moreh mentioned here the same as the elon m’onnim of Judges 9:37? Probably, and elon moreh is likely a place for divination. Is moreh the name of a man? It is “according to the usual interpretation.” Or should we read mareh as interpreted by the Septuagint and Vulgate?
Is an elon an oak, as according to the Septuagint and Peshitta? Dillmann thinks not. “It is . . . more probable that” elon “means terebinth.” The Targums and Jerome translate it as “plain,” which probably hints that they understood it to have an “idolatrous signification.”
Verse 7. Where the Masoretic Text reads vayomer, “He said,” “the Septuagint, Samaritan, Peshitta and Vulgate add lo to vayomer.”
Verse 15. Should we read byt, with the Masoretic Text, or byth, with the Septuagint.
Verse 16. Do the mentions of horses and camels constitute an anachronism here? Dillmann thinks so.
Dillmann thinks that the words “male and female slaves” are either not original to the text, or have been accidentally copied into the wrong place.
Verse 17. Does the placement of the words “and his household” indicate that this phrase is a late addition to the verse? Not necessarily, according to Dillmann.
Verse 19. Where the Hebrew text reads “Here is your wife,” the Septuagint adds “in front of you.”
Verse 20. “At the end of the verse the Samaritan and some manuscripts of the Septuagint add [and Lot with him].”
Conclusion
This exercise, where I picked a chapter more or less at random, shows a bit less ambiguity and difficulty than I imagined. Maybe I’ll try it again with a harder chapter.