Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy 23 describes God walking through the Israelite camp, suggesting that God has a body. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos avoids this by using the term “Shekinah,” or glory, to describe God's nearness while removing embodied language.
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Deuteronomy 23:14
Hebrew Bible
13 You must have a spade among your other equipment, and when you relieve yourself outside you must dig a hole with the spade and then turn and cover your excrement. 14 For the Lord your God walks about in the middle of your camp to deliver you and defeat your enemies for you. Therefore your camp should be holy, so that he does not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you. 15 You must not return an escaped slave to his master when he has run away to you.
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Onkelos Deuteronomy 23:15
Targum
14 And thou shalt have a blade upon thy weapon, that when thou sittest abroad thou mayest dig with it, and cover that which cometh from thee. 15 For the Shekinah of the Lord thy God walketh amid thy camp to save thee and deliver up thy enemies before thee, and thy camp shall be sacred, that nothing that offendeth may be seen among thee, lest His Word turn away from doing thee good. 16 Thou shalt not deliver up a slave of the Gentiles into the hand of his master, when he hath escaped to thee from his master;
Date: 100-200 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... the concept of the visible glory of God as a substitute for speech about the visible God was well known before the Targums were written, and the targumists follow in the steps of that tradition. “Glory” can also be used wherever the targumist wished to render any biblical text that suggested God was spatially located in a place, as in Genesis 28:16 (Onkelos, Neofiti) ... Deuteronomy 23:15: Unlike the term “glory,” the term Shekhinah did not already have a long tradition behind it in Jewish theology, but the concept goes back to the biblical use of the verb used to denote the “dwelling” or local manifestation of God (Exodus 40:35; Deuteronomy 33:16) ..."
Cook, Edward M.
"The Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the Targums" in Henze, Matthias (ed.) A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism
(pp. 92-117) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012
* 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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