Alter-ations

indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.  Genesis 22:17  NASB

Seed – The monumental work of Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible reveals just how inadequate most English versions really are, not because the scholarship is lacking but because Hebrew is, as Aviya Kushner notes, “messy.” Alter’s introduction (mandatory, if you are going to use his translation) notes:

“The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible is the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances this amounts to explaining away the Bible.  This impulse may be attributed not only to a rather reduced sense of the philological enterprise but also to a feeling that the Bible, because of its canonical status, has to be made accessible—indeed, transparent—to all.”[1]

Alter’s example, Genesis 22:17, is an example.  Read the NASB version again (above).  Now read the versions of the New Century translation, the NIV, the RSV, and finally, the KJV.

 I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.  NCV

I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as  NIV

I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants  RSV

That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as  KJV

What did you notice?  Did you see that the Hebrew word zeraʿ (seed) has been replaced by three modern translations with the word “descendants”?  While this is philologically correct (i.e., zeraʿ can mean “descendants”), this translation explanation removes a crucial connection in ancient Semitic thought.  What is that connection?  Other pagan cosmologies about the creation of men, and their expansion, rely on sexual imagery.  The god ejaculates his semen to produce men.  Men are the direct result of divine masturbation.  But YHVH’s explanation of Abraham’s increase doesn’t follow this Mesopotamian and Egyptian pattern.  Abraham’s increase will come through human sexuality, divinely assisted.  When translators explain by using the word “descendants,” they remove the allusion to ancient divine sexuality, and we miss the point that God is not like other gods.  Altar’s criticism is correct.  “ . . . the modern English versions—especially in their treatment of Hebrew narrative prose—have placed readers at a grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in its original language.”[2]  Fortunately, in this instance, the NASB doesn’t drop the ball.  All the others do.

“To substitute ‘offspring’ for ‘seed’ here may not fundamentally alter the meaning but it diminishes the vividness of the statement, . .”[3]  My suggestion is that it also removes us from the thought world of ancient Mesopotamia.  It makes Abraham modern.  He isn’t!  Even more crucial, it never shows us how YHVH challenges the gods of the surrounding cultures in this one divine intervention that births His children.

Topical Index: seed, zeraʿ, descendants, Mesopotamia, Genesis 22:17

[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 2, Prophets, Nevi’im: A Translation with Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company, New York: 2019), p. xv.

[2] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 2, Prophets, Nevi’im: A Translation with Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company, New York: 2019), p. xiv.

[3] Ibid.