Texts in Conversation
The Hebrew version of Haggai echoes the disasters of Amos, but the Hebrew text is damaged and reads only that the people brought nothing to God. The Greek Septuagint reads it exactly as Amos does, restoring the missing language.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Haggai 2:17
Hebrew Bible
16 From that time when one came expecting a heap of 20 measures, there were only 10; when one came to the wine vat to draw out 50 measures from it, there were only 20. 17 I struck all the products of your labor with blight, disease, and hail, and yet you brought nothing to me,’ says the Lord. 18 ‘Think carefully about the past: from today, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, to the day work on the temple of the Lord was resumed, think about it.
LXX Haggai 2:17
Septuagint
16 who you were when you used to throw twenty satas of barley into a corn bin and it became ten satas of barley, and you used to enter into the wine vat to draw out fifty measures and twenty came. 17 I struck you, all the works of your hands with dearth, and with a blasting wind, and with hail, but you have not returned to me,’ says the Lord. 18 ‘Now subject your hearts from this day, and from now on, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, and from the day when the temple of the Lord was founded, consider in your hearts
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Notes and References
... but nothing [brought] you to me. This phrase is among the most difficult in Haggai and is usually taken to be a corrupt quotation of Amos 4:9 (Mitchell 1912:70). The beginning of verse 17 does indeed contain language similar to that of Amos (‘I smote you with blight and with mildew’); and this line apparently echoes the familiar refrain found in Amos (4:6,9,10,11), ‘and yet you did not [re]turn to me.’ The Septuagint reads Haggai exactly like Amos; Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia adopts that reading. However, the required emendation would not resolve all the problems in the Masoretic Text. It would produce the following translation: ‘Yet you did not return to me’ (Revised Standard Version, and others). As it stands, the Masoretic Text literally reads: ‘And not (or nothing) unto me.’ The verb is missing in the Hebrew. As vocalized, ‘etkem (‘you’) has the sign of the definite direct object but has no verb to govern it. ...
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