Texts in Conversation
In the Hebrew version of Jonah, when the prophet is asked who he is, he identifies himself by nationality as a Hebrew. In the Greek Septuagint, Jonah calls himself a servant of God, changing his answer from his national identity to his role as prophet.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jonah 1:9
Hebrew Bible
8 They said to him, “Tell us, whose fault is it that this disaster has overtaken us? What’s your occupation? Where do you come from? What’s your country? And who are your people?” 9 He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Hearing this, the men became even more afraid and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men said this because they knew that he was trying to escape from the Lord, because he had previously told them.)
LXX Jonah 1:9
Septuagint
8 And they said to him, “Tell us, what is your occupation? And from where did you come? And out of which territory? And from which people are you?” 9 And he said to them, “I am a servant of the Lord, and I revere the Lord, God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 So the men feared with a great fear and said to him, “What is this you have done?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the face of the Lord, because he had told them.
Search:
Notes and References
... instead of having Jonah label himself a “Hebrew,” the Septuagint has him admitting, doulos kuriou ego eimi, “the Lord’s servant am I.” This statement could only have resulted from a paraphrase of 2 Kings 14:25 (see above), where we are told that Jeroboam II succeeded in enlarging Israel “according to the word of the Lord, Israel’s god, who spoke through his servant [ʿabdô] Jonah the son of Amittay, the prophet who hailed from Gath Hepher.” We need not suppose that the Septuagint is the “original” reading from which the Hebrew swerved, because the versions as well as all of the Hebrew copies consistently presume or preserve ʿbry (Trible 1963: 23–24). In truth, it is doubtful that there ever was a single, pristine, “original” Jonah text that the Septuagint translators could learnedly improve. Rather, during their time, there probably were many Jonah copies, some of which apparently read *ʿbdy where Hebrew now has ʿbry ...
Sasson, Jack M.
Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation
(p. 116) Doubleday, 1990
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.