Now Reuben returned to the pit, and behold, Joseph was not in the pit; so he tore his garments. He returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is not there; as for me, where am I to go?” Genesis 37:29-30 NASB Is not there – We looked into the grammatical implications of this verse once before. Perhaps you’ll recall it (CLICK…
When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. Genesis 37:21 NIV Tried to rescue – Jonathan Sacks makes an interesting comment about the literal Hebrew in this verse: It is at this point that the Torah does something it does nowhere else: It makes a statement…
He returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is not there; as for me, where am I to go?” Genesis 37:30 NASB Is not there – The translation reads the way we expectit to read, but that isn’t what the verse actually says. In Hebrew it reads, einenu, that is “he is not.” Of course,…
While Israel stayed in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine; and Israel heard. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve in number. Genesis 35:22 New JPS Now – Dr. Shani Tzoref’s article, “Did Rueben Lie with Bilhah?”[1] points out that in this verse there is an extra letter, a Pey,…
