Is there a new Bible diet in Num. 5:27?
Today's post on Christendom Blogosis asks if the NET Bible translation of Num. 5:27 is about a new Bible diet. The conclusion is that the NET Bible wording is ... (well, go read it for yourself; the post is interesting and important for making better Bibles).
Categories: NET Bible, Bible translation
Categories: NET Bible, Bible translation
posted by Wayne Leman at 9:26 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks for the post WL. I really like the NLT --
27If she has defiled herself by being unfaithful to her husband, the water that brings the curse will cause bitter suffering. She will become infertile,[a] and her name will become a curse word among her people.
Footnotes:
1. Numbers 5:27 Hebrew Her body will swell and her thigh will waste away.
-- -- --
I know footnotes can be overused, but this is a good example. Query: do Hebrew scholars universally agree that the idiom means "become infertile?"
Richard Friedman's Commentary on the Torah says the opposite-- the womb will swell, the thigh will sag means that she will be (and is) pregnant.
Robert Alter in his Five Books of Moses suggests that it might mean a miscarriage - "the ordeal thus becoming an induced abortion", but he admits there is much uncertainty about it.
Part of the problem is, is she pregnant to begin with? Is that the evidence of adultery?
I'd never noticed this passage before, but there is a wealth of speculation surrounding it!
Alter points out in the notes for verse 15: "This troubling and also facinating ritual is the only clear-cut instance of trial by ordeal in the Bible. ... The ordeal, moreover, is based on a kind of archaic magic, however one seeks to square it with loftier versions of monotheism." It is the basis for an entire tractate of the Talmud and much debate.
I think it's safe to conclude that NOBODY really knows what it means.
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