Deuteronomy 33:2

Hebrew Bible

1 This is the blessing Moses the man of God pronounced upon the Israelites before his death. 2 He said: “The Lord came from Sinai and revealed himself to Israel from Seir. He appeared in splendor from Mount Paran, and came forth with ten thousand holy ones. With his right hand he gave a fiery law to them. 3 Surely he loves the people; all your holy ones are in your power. And they sit at your feet, each receiving your words. 4 Moses delivered to us a law, an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob.

Samaritan Deuteronomy 33:2

Samaritan Penteteuch
Samaritan

1 And this is the blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. 2 And he said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand there was flashing of His faith. 3 Yea, he loved the people; and all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; and every one shall receive of thy words. 4 Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.

 Notes and References

"... According to the oral reading tradition recorded by the Masoretes, supported by most ancient witnesses (including the Samaritan version), the kötib in Deuteronomy 33:2 is to be read as two words. (Compare the Aleppo margin 'written as one word and read as two words.' The writing of together with a following monosyllabic word is found also in Jeremiah 6:29. Short proclitic words are often written together with the following word in inscriptions as well. The Samaritan Pentateuch has OR written as two words. There is only one ancient witness that may have interpreted our form as a single word, the LXX. It has been conjectured that the word 'angels' in the Septuagint's rendering of the end of 33:2 corresponds to the kétib and that the latter is to be compared to Arabic 'lion' and Epigraphic South Arabian 'man, warrior') Because the second word looks like the noun ('law'), attested in Hebrew and Aramaic passages of Esther, Ezra, and Daniel, the phrase was traditionally understood as connecting the Torah with fire in one way or another ..."

Steiner, Richard C. Two Verbs Masquerading as Nouns in Moses' Blessing (Deuteronomy 33:2, 28) (pp. 693-698) Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 115, No. 4, 1996

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