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Onkelos Genesis

About this book

The Seventh Day

Chapter 2

1 The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their hosts.⁠ 2 And the Lord finished on the seventh day His work that He had done, and rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. 3 And the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all His work which the Lord had created to make.

Adam and the Garden

4 These are the history of the heavens and the earth, when they were created when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 5 And no trees of the field were yet on the earth, and no plants of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not caused rain to fall on the earth, and there was no human to cultivate the ground. 6 And a mist rose from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 And the Lord God created Adam from dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam received the power of speech.⁠ 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the beginning, and He settled the man whom He had created there. 9 And the Lord God made every tree that was pleasing to look at grow from the earth, and good for food, and the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden, and the Tree from which those who eat its fruit can discern between good and evil.⁠ 10 And a river flowed out from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided into four main rivers. 11 The name of the first is Pishon, which flows around all the land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 and the gold of that land is good; there is bedalcha and burilla-stones. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon, which flows around all the land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is Tigris, which flows to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the Lord God took Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. 16 And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying, You may freely eat from every tree of the garden; 17 but you shall not eat from the tree whose fruit gives those who eat it knowledge of good and evil; for on the day you eat from it you shall certainly die.

A Wife for Adam

18 And the Lord God said, It is not right for Adam to be alone; I will make him a helper suited to him. 19 And the Lord God created from the earth every wild animal of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call each one; and whatever name Adam gave each living animal, that was its name. 20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and of the birds of the heavens, and of every wild animal of the field; but no helper suited to Adam was found. 21 And the Lord God caused sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and filled its place with flesh; 22 and the Lord God formed the rib which He took from Adam into a woman, and He brought her to Adam. 23 And Adam said, This at last is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called wife, because she was taken from her husband.⁠ 24 Therefore a man shall leave the sleeping quarters of his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall be of one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 2:1 and Onkelos Genesis 2:1

Hebrew Bible · Targum

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Summary

Genesis uses a grammatically singular word for “host,” which can refer to many kinds of beings. The Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos uses a plural, attempting to clarify the ambiguity, following the Targum tradition of using explicit language.

Passages

Genesis 2:1

Hebrew Bible
1 The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. 2 By the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day all the work that he had been doing. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he ceased all the work that he had been doing in creation.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Onkelos Genesis 2:1

Targum
1 The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their hosts. 2 And the Lord finished on the seventh day His work that He had done, and rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. 3 And the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all His work which the Lord had created to make.
50–500 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Onkelos Genesis

References

"... Our targumist pluralizes the biblical 'host,' which is in the singular. Biblical Hebrew is often unconcerned about tenses, and frequently uses the singular for the plural and the past for the future, and vice versa. Onkelos does not indicate whether the hosts were angels, planets, or animals. Pseudo-Jonathan states that they were the ten miraculous things that God created at twilight before the first Sabbath that are listed in Mishnah Avot 5:9 ..."
Israel Drazin and Stanley M. Wagner, Onkelos on the Torah, Genesis: Understanding the Bible Text (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2006), 11.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 2:1 and Onkelos Genesis 2:1

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