Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy 33 describes God giving a “fiery law,” but the Greek Septuagint translator likely struggled with the Hebrew, leading to significant changes including the phrase “fiery law” changed to “angels.”
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
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 hand8. And they sit at your feet, each receiving your words. 4 Moses delivered to us a law, an inheritance for the assembly of Jacob.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Deuteronomy 33:2
Septuagint
1 And this is the blessing with which Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death. 2 And he said, The Lord has come from Sinai, and has appeared from Seir to us, and has hastened out of the mount of Paran, with the ten thousands of Kadesh; on his right hand were his angels with him. 3 And he spared his people, and all his sanctified ones are under your hands; and they are under you; and he received of his words 4 the law which Moses charged us, an inheritance to the assemblies of Jacob.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The reason the LXX is worthy of mention is because the Greek Old Testament was, by and large, the Bible of the New Testament writers. Now, this is a bit of an overstatement, since a number of Old Testament citations in the New Testament seem to correspond more closely to the Hebrew text than to the Greek, and some don't line up with any version in particular ... If one compares the TNIV of Deuteronomy 33:2 with an English translation of the LXX, one notices some differences ... It is not immediately clear, however, why the LXX takes qdsh as a place name, in keeping with the general tenor of the passage to speak of locations from which the Lord came, but then takes mimino in a nongeographical way, unless it is to correspond more easily with the next word. The LXX reads that difficult Hebrew 'eshdat, somewhat inexplicably, as 'angels with him.' How these two are connected is cloudy indeed, but it likely reflects the Greek translator's attempt to handle a real difficulty ..."
Peter Enns, “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” in Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, Counterpoints: Bible and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 190–191.
* 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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