Lech Lecha 5786
Live and Let Tabernacle
This week we are reading Parashat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12–17), another that (like so many in Genesis) has some famous passages that tend to attract most of our attention. I’m going to take you with me this week to a chapter that not everyone is familiar with, Genesis 14: The Battle of the Four Kings against the Five. There was a little serendipity involved in getting me there.
The reason this perhaps once-famous battle is in the Torah is that the five kings were the kings of the cities that were to be destroyed in Genesis 19, and the four kings who fought against them made Lot, the nephew of “Abram the Hebrew,” a prisoner of war. Abram chases them and gets him back — a pretty simple story that, not coincidentally, may include a stop in Jerusalem. That’s not what I’m writing about this time, though.
What caught my eye was this: In two consecutive verses, Lot is living in one place and Abram in another. The NRSVue uses the same verb for both — but the Hebrew doesn’t:
Gen 14:12 they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived [יֹשֵׁ֖ב] in Sodom, and his goods and departed.
13 Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living [שֹׁכֵ֨ן] by the oaksm of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner; these were allies of Abram.
That small m note on the oaks is because some think eilonei is not a word but part of the place name. (Do you call the city Ramat Gan or translate it as Highland Park?) Perhaps I will work on the question of the oaks some other year; for right now, you see (even if you can’t read the Hebrew) that these two men are “living” with two different Hebrew verbs.
We can push this even a bit further. These two words have the same grammatical form. Yet NRSVue translates one as a past tense and one as a past progressive. Lot “lived” in Sodom; Abram “was living” by the oaks of Mamre. What was Lot doing differently than Abram?
What I found is something quite interesting. These two verbs often occur together in poetic contexts. As often happens in the parallel phrases of biblical poetry, one of the phrases uses a verb that’s common in prose, while the other matches it with a word that much rarer and more poetic. ישׁב y‑sh‑b is still a word that’s used in everyday conversation to mean “sit” and (in other verb conjugations) “settle.” שׁכן sh‑k‑n is much the fancier of the two words. Nowadays we might even take a hint from W. H. Auden and translate it as “to tabernacle,” since משׁכן mishkan, a noun from this root, occurs some 80 or 90 times in Exodus and Deuteronomy to describe the Tabernacle the Israelites constructed in the wilderness.
So these two verbs can be poetic synonyms. Perhaps the writer simply varied them in our story in two consecutive verses just for the sake of pleasant writing? They are actually found together in another verse in the Torah that’s not poetic but prosaic:
Num 35:34 Do not defile the land in which you live [יֹשְׁבִ֣ים], in which I also live [שֹׁכֵ֣ן], for I YHWH live [שֹׁכֵ֕ן] among the Israelites.”
We might begin to wonder whether shakhan is a verb reserved (almost) exclusively for God — and for people like Abram who are God’s close companions. Or is it simply a little more highfalutin’ than yashav and therefore more suitable when you are discussing more serious things or more important people?
Now for the serendipity — in fact, a double dose of it:
First, there are just 16 verses in the Bible where both verbs are used. I’ve told you about three of them already and four more of them are found in the book of Isaiah. Here is the first of those, quoted in the NJPS translation:
Isa 13:20 Nevermore shall it be settled [תֵשֵׁ֣ב]
Nor dwelt [תִשְׁכֹּ֖ן] in through all the ages.
That verse continues by saying, “No Arab shall pitch his tent there,” an even more poetic way to describe living somewhere, using the verb יהל yahel, a contracted form derived from the common word אוהל óhel ‘tent’. (For you language fans, that makes it a denominative verb.)
Those tents are common enough in the Bible, and especially when the patriarchs live in them throughout the book of Genesis. The verb is much less usual, occurring only twice more in the Bible — both times in this week’s parashah, and both verses also using the “prosaic” verb ישׁב:
Gen 13:12 Abram remained [יָשַׁ֣ב] in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled [יָשַׁב֙] in the cities of the Plain, pitching his tents [וַיֶּאֱהַ֖ל] near Sodom.
Gen 13:18 And Abram moved his tent [וַיֶּאֱהַ֣ל], and came to dwell [וַיֵּ֛שֶׁב] at the terebinths of Mamre, which are in Hebron; and he built an altar there to the LORD.
So Abram moved his tent in order to yashav at the terebinths (or “oaks”) of Mamre in chapter 13 but ended up in chapter 14 by shakhan-ing there.
Now the second piece of serendipity. As I’m writing this, my Bible Guy blog is about to post part of our discussion of Gen 9:27, which I translate this way:
Gen 9:27 May God jet-propel Jepheth, but let Him tabernacle [וְיִשְׁכֹּ֖ן] in the tents of Shem. May Canaan be a slave to him/them!”
You’ll find my two-part discussion of that verse here and here. Why is it relevant to us? I’ll let Umberto Cassuto, in his comment on that verse, explain:
And let him dwell in the tents of Shem] The traditional exposition, which takes the subject of the verb yishkon [‘let him dwell’] to be God, does not accord with the simple meaning of the verse. According to the plain sense of the words, the subject can only be Japheth. But it is difficult to agree with the exegetes who see in this sentence an expression of Messianic hope and the acceptance of the God of Israel by the children of Japheth. The correct interpretation has to be sought in the direction of our explanation of the preceding verse. Among the allies and confederates of Chedorlaomer king of Elam there is mentioned (xiv 1, 9) Tidal king of Goiim. This strange expression can only be explained on the basis of what is stated in chapter x (v. 5) with regard to the sons of Japheth, from whom the coastland PEOPLES [haggoyim] spread. The name Goiim denotes, therefore, a section of the sons of Japheth; and since Tidal king of Goiim was the confederate of Chedorlaomer king of Elam, who was of the sons of Shem, and went forth with him to help him in his war, it is possible to say of him and of his men, who belonged to the sons of Japheth, that they dwelt in the tents of Shem, precisely as it is stated of Abram in the same chapter, xiv (v. 13).
In all honesty, when I wrote my Gen 9:27 comments I did not accept Cassuto’s explanation. Yet it seems the universe is trying to push me toward some connection between that verse and our story in Genesis 14. I still don’t have an answer to the question I started with this week; sometimes that’s how it works. I’ll just conclude with these three points:
It’s always worthwhile reading the Bible slowly and asking the questions that pop into your head. You never know which answer will lead you in a productive direction. Even the ones you can’t answer (yet) at least increase your stock of “known unknowns.”
Don’t settle for reading just one English translation. If you haven’t (yet) learned enough Hebrew to read the Bible, at least use two different translations to alert you when there’s something in the original language of the verse that’s worth thinking about.
When I reach this point on The Bible Guy, I’ll have to give it some more thought. For now, reading it somewhat out of context, I can’t decide whether the difference between “living” and “tabernacling” in Gen 14:12 is just stylistic, or whether there’s something more profound being conveyed here: perhaps that Lot is living in a house and Abraham in a tent — a fancy tent, a tabernacle (if you like), but a tent nonetheless. If you have another idea worth sharing, by all means leave a comment.