Here It Comes Again (1)

Then ^[a^]he said to the people, “Go forward and march around the city, and the armed men shall go on ahead of the ark of the Lord.”  Joshua 6:7 NASB

He (they) said – Did you notice the little footnote in this text.  It reads:  “Joshua 6:7 Another reading is they.”  It’s pretty hard to confuse “he” and “they.”  One is singular, masculine; the other is plural, gender unspecified.  So why the footnote.  Ah, you need to look at the Hebrew to find out.  Here it is:

ויאמרו (וַיֹּאמֶר) אֶל-הָעָם עִבְרוּ וְסֹבּוּ אֶת-הָעִיר וְהֶחָלוּץ–יַעֲבֹר לִפְנֵי אֲרוֹן יְהוָה

Do you see that the first word in the sentence (remember to read from the right) is without diacritical markings (what we colloquially refer to as “pointing”).  The second word in parenthesis has the marking.  This indicates that the word is written as it is spelled in the first occurrence but read as it is spelled in the second occurrence.  So, it’s written as “and they said” (with the vav ending of the verb conjugation), but it’s read as “and he said,” leaving off the final vav.  Why?

Well, if you read the whole passage you would quickly see that this particular dialog occurs between God and Joshua, and subsequently, the priests.  Verses 2-5 are God’s instructions to Joshua.  Verse 6 says that Joshua then called the priests and told them what they were to do.  So, verse 7 either continues Joshua’s instructions, or it recounts that the priests then told the people to go forward.  Verse 8, however, reads as if Joshua was the only speaker (“And it was so, that when Joshua had spoken to the people,”).  Context provides the reason for reading וַיֹּאמֶר rather than ויאמרו, but this raises an interesting question about inspiration and transmission (as usual).  Orthodox Judaism (as well as conservative Christianity) claims that the biblical text is inspired by God and that the original texts are exactly what God transmitted.  In Christianity, this as called plenary inerrancy, that is, all the text is without error.  In its original, of course, since everyone acknowledges that copies contain scribal errors.  This particular qere ketiv (what is written and what is read) suggests that tradition changed the audible text because it made more sense than the written text.  But the written text was supposed to be the text delivered by God.  If that doctrine is true, what would have ever possessed the readers to change it?  And if they did change it, what does that say about the inerrancy of the written text?  Did God make a mistake in His revelation of the word, or did human beings alter the text in order to make it more comprehensible?  If you choose the latter alternative, then can you still legitimately claim that you’re reading God’s inspired word?  By the way, a quick survey of other English Bibles reveals that about half of them use “and he said” and the other half “and they said,” without explaining why.  At least in the Hebrew text you can see what happened.  And now that you know, what are you going to do with your belief about inerrancy?

Topical Index:  qere ketiv, vayomer, vayomerv, inspiration, inerrancy, Joshua 6:7