13 October 2017
This is part of a translation project. _This is a very rough draft, basically a lightly edited version of the RV. For the text that accompanies these notes, see here.
Notes
4. when he was eight days old. Literally, son of eight days. In Hebrew “son of X amount of time” is a standard idiom for “when he was X amount of time old.”
4. as God had commanded him. A reference to Genesis 17:19, “and you shall call his name Isaac.”
5. one hundred years old. Literally, a son of a hundred years, the idiom as in verse 4.
6. laugh. In Hebrew, the term looks like the Hebrew name “Isaac,” which can be read “[he] will laugh.”
8. feast. The Hebrew term is related to the verb “to drink.”
8. on the day. The Hebrew expression, beyom, is literally “on the day,” and most translations translate it literally, implying that the party was thrown on the very day that Isaac was weaned. The NLT, however, takes it as indicating not necessarily a specific day but the generally time when Isaac was to be weaned.
9. mocking. The verb is constructed from the same root as “laugh” which is used repeatedly in the stories concerning Isaac. Generally the implied object is taken to be Isaac, so that Ishmael is either mocking, making fun of, or playing with Isaac.
\14. Here we have one of the many discrepancies created by the way in which the Pentateuch was stitched together from various sources. From Genesis 16:16, 17:24-25, and 21:5, we would gather that Ishmael is fourteen years older than Isaac, which should make him about sixteen or seventeen when Isaac is weaned and thus when Ishmael and Hagar are expelled into the desert. And yet this chapter’s account of Ishmael portrays him as a little boy — Abraham puts the boy “on her shoulder” along with the bread and water. Later, the boy is in danger of dying of thirst, and she “casts” (21:15) him down beneath a shrub.
Some evangelical translations (NIV, NLT, NASB, NET, Holman) translate in various ways so that the child does not wind up “on her shoulder.” However, the more mainstream scholarly translations (RSV, NRSV, NJPS) put the child on Hagar’s shoulder, along with the evangelical ESV, the traditional KJV, and the Vulgate. The child being put on the shoulder is the most straightforward interpretation of the Hebrew, and even a translation that dodges the implications of this verse will have to face the problem of Ishmael being cast under a tree and a text that takes for granted that Ishmael is in significantly greater danger than his mother of death, and the angel’s command to “hold him in your hand.” After the episode, we read that “he grew.” There are too many contributing pieces of evidence that Ishmael is pictured as quite small in this episode. Nor does a piecemeal approach do any good at tackling the pervasive issue of differing doublets throughout the Pentateuch. Hagar is cast out into the wilderness twice because originally these are two different versions of the same story (compare chapter 16).
15. in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. That is, in the Negev, where Beersheba is located.
20. archer. The Hebrew term “archer,” roveh qashat, includes the term qeshet, “bow,” just as the term bowshot did in verse 16.
23. swear. Both stories in this chapter are set in or around Beer-sheba. This second one with Abimelech attempts an etiology of the name. The terms “swear” and “seven” share the same consonantal root with the “sheba” of “Beer-sheba.” The term Beer, Hebrew for “well,” appears when Hagar’s eyes are miraculously “opened” to see a well. More speculatively, I’m inclined to wonder whether this and other stories concerning Abraham and Gerar connect the name “Gerar” to Abraham’s staying there as a ger (“sojourner”).
\23. The words translated here as “posterity” and “descendants” only occur together in this expression. The two other occurrences are Job 18:19 and Isaiah 14:22.
\31. This verse explicitly connects the sheba of Beer-sheba to the verb “swear,” but implicitly it seems also to connect to the seven (sheba) ewes which attest to the legitimate ownership of Beer-sheba by Abraham, rather than the Philistines. The whole passage is anachronistic, as Philistines are not attested in this area until much later.