Biblical Subtitles

Then Joshua and all Israel ^[a]pretended to be defeated before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness.  Joshua 8:15  NASB

Pretended to be defeated – Have you ever watched a movie with dialogue in your native tongue but with subtitles added?  You’ll notice immediately that the subtitles often flatten the conversation, reducing the nuances and subtilties to straightforward meanings.  When you hear what is said, it doesn’t match what is written.  Oh, you get the gist of the story in the subtitles but a lot of the depth disappears.  That’s what happens when we read the Bible in translation.  We don’t actually get the depth of the text.  We get biblical subtitles.  We might think we have the message, and perhaps we do have the simplified one, but a lot of the complexity just disappears.  As an example, let’s look at Joshua 8:15.  Here it is in Hebrew:

וַיִּנָּ֥גְע֛וּ יְהוֹשֻׁ֥עַ וְכׇל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לִפְנֵיהֶ֑ם וַיָּנֻ֖סוּ דֶּ֥רֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּֽר

Let’s examine the first word in this verse.  It’s not “Then Joshua and all Israel.”  It’s the verb, translated as “pretended to be defeated.”  You’ll notice the footnote in the NASB version.  It reads: “Joshua 8:15 Lit reversed before.”  I’m not sure this is helpful at all.  You’ll see why in a moment.

Let’s look at the root verb, נָגַע (nāgaʿ), “to touch, reach, strike. . . The root ngʿ denotes that which pertains when one thing (or person) physically contacts another.” ^[1]  But the translation doesn’t say that Joshua and all Israel were struck by the soldiers of Ai.  It says that Joshua and all Israel pretended to be struck.  There’s a substantial difference.  That difference is not in the verb in the text.  So, where did the idea of pretending come from?  Well, you have to know the outcome of the story before you can read this text as pretense.  You have to know that Joshua and all Israel entered into a deceptive military tactic in order to draw the people out of the walled city.  You have to know the end before you can understand the beginning.  Now you might respond, “But, of course.  The author of this text did know the end because it was past history.  Not a problem.”  And you would be right . . . except . . .

Except the verb form in the text isn’t correct (this will be a bit complicated).  The grammar provided by Logos designates this verb form (וַיִּנָּ֥גְע֛וּ ) as a nif’al, specifically, a nif’al, wayyiqtol (waw-consecutive + imperfect), third person, masculine, plural.  The nif’al form means that this action is a simple passive.  That means that someone else struck Joshua and all Israel (the passive sense—that is, caused by another).  Although the nif’al can also be reflexive, it’s notreflexive here because they did not strike themselves.  It means that they actually were struck by others, in this case, the men of Ai.  But if they actually were struck, why have we translated this as “pretended” to be struck?  The end comes before the beginning.

This isn’t the only problem.  The conjugation of  the root ng’ here isn’t exactly a nif’al.  The nif’al form is constructed by adding a prefix nun to the beginning of the verb.  But the text doesn’t show this.  Instead, it shows a prefixed yod before the verbal root.  The simple past third person plural should be:

נָגְעוּ (naga’u) – they touched (masculine/mixed plural)

Where did the yod come from and what does it mean?

Very few Jewish commentators deal with this question.  One suggests that the verb is actually a modified hithpa’el, a verb which also could be reflexive.  The reasoning goes like this: Joshua and all Israel actually were struck by the soldiers of Ai but they acted as if the wounds were much more serious (they pretended).  The deception was in the severity of the wounds, not in their feigned retreat.  In a sense, they did act upon themselves.  So, this verb, which should be a nif’al but isn’t quite, gives us a clue that the pretense wasn’t all slight-of-hand, but it accomplished the same result.

Why have we spent valuable time digging into these apparently insignificant (and perhaps somewhat boring) details? Because we don’t want biblical subtitles!  We want the depths, the full riches of the text, and unless we are willing to dig deeply past the translators’ attempts to make is easy, we will be just like all the other lazy readers—and miss the multifaceted wonder of the Bible.

Topical Index: nāgaʿ, strike, touch, nif’al, hithpa’el, pretend, Joshua 8:15

^[1] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 1293 נָגַע. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 551). Moody Press.