Texts in Conversation
Genesis 15 describes Abram driving away birds that descend on the sacrificial animals. The Greek Septuagint translation changes this, instead saying that Abram sat with them, although it is ambiguous if he sat with the birds or with the sacrifices.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 15:11
Hebrew Bible
9 The Lord said to him, “Take for me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” 10 So Abram took all these for him and then cut them in two and placed each half opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds in half. 11 When birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12 When the sun went down, Abram fell sound asleep, and great terror overwhelmed him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Genesis 15:11
Septuagint
9 And he said to him, Take for me a heifer in her third year, and a she-goat in her third year, and a ram in his third year, and a dove and a pigeon. 10 So he took to him all these, and divided them in the midst, and set them opposite to each other, but the birds he did not divide. 11 And birds came down upon the bodies, even upon the divided parts of them, and Abram sat down by them. 12 And about sunset a trance fell upon Abram, and look! a great gloomy terror falls upon him. 13 And it was said to Abram, You shall surely know that your seed shall be a temporary resident in a land not their own, and they shall enslave them, and afflict them, and humble them four hundred years.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... LXX-G’s translation shows it understood the Hebrew differently. Its use of the same word ‘winged creature’ for the gathered winged creatures and those coming down on the divided animals implies that they could be the same birds. More problematic is its rendering of Abram’s ‘driving away’ the birds ... LXX-G reports that Abram ‘sat down’ with ‘them’. The referent of ‘them’ – a neuter plural pronoun – is unclear; both the birds and the bodies of the divided animals are neuter plural nouns. Sitting down with one’s enemies, symbolized by the birds, or sitting down with the victims, symbolized by the bodies, are both admirable actions that can bring about reconciliation or sympathetic suffering. However, both are quite different from the symbolic action of driving away one’s enemies ..."
Susan Brayford, Septuagint Commentary Series: Genesis (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 299–300.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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