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In Judges 6, God commissions Gideon, but the Greek Septuagint changes this to say the angel commissions Gideon. This follows a pattern where the Greek text changes its Hebrew source to add an intermediary instead of showing God acting directly.
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Judges 6:14
Hebrew Bible
13 Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.” 14 Then the Lord himself turned to him and said, “You have the strength. Deliver Israel from the power of the Midianites! Have I not sent you?” 15 Gideon said to him, “But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family.”
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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LXX Judges 6:14
Septuagint
13 And Gideon said to him, “In me, my Lord! But if the Lord is with us, why have these troubles found us? And where are all his wonders that our fathers fully told us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord lead up us out of Egypt?’ And now he has cast us out, and he has given us into the hand of Midian.” 14 Then the angel of the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this strength of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Look, I have sent you.” 15 And Gideon said to him, “In me, my Lord, by what shall I save Israel? Look, my thousand is weak in Manasseh, and I am the insignificant one in the house of my father.”
Date: 2nd Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The replacement of God by his angel is not limited to this passage in Exodus, but is found elsewhere in the Bible as well. The interchange of the Tetragrammaton in the Masoretic text and “angel of the Lord” in the Septuagint is attested in only one other context ... Judges 6:14 ..."
Segal, Michael
The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology
(p. 208) Brill, 2007
* 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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