Texts in Conversation
Numbers 14 uses a metaphor comparing the inhabitants of Canaan to bread, saying they will be easy to conquer. The Aramaic translation in Targum Neofiti clarifies the meaning of the metaphor, following a practice in the Targums that removes ambiguity.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Numbers 14:9
Hebrew Bible
8 If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land that is flowing with milk and honey. 9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection has turned aside from them, but the Lord is with us. Do not fear them!” 10 However, the whole community threatened to stone them. But the glory of the Lord appeared to all the Israelites at the tent of meeting.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Neofiti Numbers 14:9
Targum
8 If the Lord takes pleasure in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land producing good fruit, pure as milk and sweet as honey. 9 Only do not rebel against the Glory of the Shekinah of the Lord. Do not fear the people of the land, for just as eating bread is easy for us, destroying them seems easy to us. Their protective shadow has left them, and the Memra of the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.” 10 All the assembled people said to stone them. The Glory of the Shekinah of the Lord was revealed in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel.
Date: 300–1000 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... One major trait of the Targums is that they tend to resolve biblical metaphors into nonmetaphorical speech; they rewrite the figurative as the literal. An example is the following from Numbers 14:9 ... Here, two different approaches are taken to resolving the simple metaphor “the people of the land are our bread.” Onkelos takes the phrase to mean simply that the hostile people will be delivered by God into the power of the Israelites. There is no attempt to refashion the metaphor into a simile or to highlight any property of bread as the reason for the image; instead, the targumist resorts to straight paraphrase, possibly harking back to the wording of Exodus 23:31 (“I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands”). Neofiti, on the other hand, truly resolves the metaphor into a simile, explaining why the biblical text uses the image of bread in the first place ..."
Edward M. Cook, “The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 92–117.
* 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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