Nehar Deah

Beshalach

How does the Song of the Sea sound like in Aramaic?

“I will sing to Hashem, for He is highly exalted; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea” (Shemot 15:1) – these words open the song which Moses and the children of Israel sang after they crossed the Red Sea. These words are repeated by Miriam and the women who come out after them with “tambourines and dancing” (ibid, verses 20-21). This famous song – which is the reason we call the Sabbath on which we read the portion of “Beshallach” by the name “Shabbat Shira” (Sabbath of the Song) – also serves as the Torah reading for the seventh day of Passover, which is the day on which tradition holds that the splitting of the Red Sea took place.

An interesting fact to note is that, in the times of the Mishna and the Talmud, and to a certain extent also in medieval times, it was customary to read the Torah in public accompanied by its Aramaic translation. On the right hand side of the Torah reader stood a translator, someone who repeated the Torah’s words in Aramaic, verse after verse, alternately with the reader. This custom of translating the Torah was meant to aid those who where not fluent in a high level of Hebrew and to add, by means of translation, explanations and expansions of the verses they were translating, in the spirit of chazal (an acronym for “our sages of blessed memory”) and according to the level of the listeners, their needs and the events which took place in their time.

We have available to us today a number of Aramaic translations of the Torah, from Israel and Babylon and some are routinely printed in our printed versions of the Torah next to the original biblical text. The most famous of these is a translation known as “Targum Onkelos” (Onkelos’ translation) which came into being in the land of Israel in the 2nd and 3rd century and later claimed a central position on the learning of the sages of Babylon, who consolidated it and gave its final form. Other than the translation of Onkelos – which is credited to a righteous convert who lived at the end of the first century – we know of other translations of the Torah which came into being in the land of Israel in the 4th to the 7th century and are known by various names, such as “Targum Yonatan ben Uziel” (Translation of Yonatan son of Uziel) and “Targum Yerushalmi” (Jerusalem Translation). About sixty years ago a Catholic priest from Spain, named Alejandro Diez Macho, discovered another manuscript of an Aramaic translation of the Torah in the Neofiti library in the Vatican and it has been named by researchers after the library in which it was found. Each of these works contains, obviously, a translation of the Song of the Sea and we will now deal with the way the translations of the land of Israel dealt with the Song. (The Targum of Onkelos, while its origins lie in Israel, was finally edited in Babylon and its literary, linguistic and interpretive characteristics are different and therefore we should not deal with it together with its Israeli counterparts.)

The Israeli targumim of the Song of the Sea do not pretend in any way to offer a literal translation of the words of the Song. In general, a literal translation is actually an impossible task and every translation is in many ways an exegesis, but when speaking of sections of poetry whose language is complex and syntax unique – a translation cannot even hope to achieve a vague semblance of following the biblical text in its simple form. As a result of this we find in the targumim paraphrasing which greatly expands the biblical verse and not infrequently the verse “collapses” under the weight of homiletical traditions which expand it to the extent that we almost do not know that the original ever existed. In this way, for example, the verse that opens the Song (“I will sing to Hashem” etc, see above) is translated by “Targum Yonatan” as (brought here as an English translation of the Hebrew translation of the Aramaic): “We will praise and thank before Hashem the exalted, who is prouder than the proudest and rises above the highest, and whoever is proud before him – he takes his recompense (=punishes him), and because the evil Pharaoh willfully sinned before Hashem and was prideful in his heart and chased after the children of Israel, horses and their riders he cast into and drowned in the Red Sea”.

In this way the targumim present us with the Song in a greatly expanded form, where one of the characteristics which characterize them is the addition of arguments, discussions and conflicts between the main characters mentioned and hinted at in the Song. Here is an example: in its translation of “You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them” (verse 12), “Targum Yonatan” includes a fierce argument between the dry land and the sea as to the question of who will receive the bodies of the drowned Egyptians (and a similar tradition appears in the “Targum Yerushalmi” and the targum which appears in the Neofiti Manuscript). The basis for the argument is the fact that in the Song it is written “they went down into the depths like a stone” (verse 5) or “they sank as lead in the mighty waters” (verse 10) and it is therefore difficult to understand the claim that the in the end the earth swallowed them (and not the depths or the waters). More than that, what is the meaning of “he raised his right hand”? Raising the hand is usually a sign of a vow (see for example Devarim 32:40) and what place does a vow by Hashem have in our Song? In the light of this we can understand what is written in the targum: “The sea and the land argue with each other. The sea said to the land, ‘Receive your sons’ and the land said to the sea ‘Receive your killed ones’. The sea did not wish to drown them and the land did not wish to swallow them.” Neither the land nor the waters wished to receive the bodies of the Egyptians and each one has its own claims: the sea apparently felt that man was created from the earth and should also be buried there (see Bereishit 3:19 – “Because you are dust and to dust you shall return”), while the land, as the targum states, “Was afraid to accept them, so that it wouldn’t be accused of it on the day of judgment in the world to come, as [Hashem] punished the blood of Abel”, in other words, the land fears that it will be punished for accepting the bodies of the Egyptians in the same way that taking Abel’s body had brought upon it a curse (as it was said to Cain: “And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened her mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall not yield to you its strength” [Bereishit 4:12-13]). The bodies of the Egyptians were transferred from the land to the sea and vice versa, therefore the targum continues “From your outstretched hand, your right hand, Hashem, you vowed to the land that it would not be accused in the world to come and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them”, therefore we have an explanation of why Hashem had to make a vow and to whom.

It seems that this argument between the land and the waters does not come only to solve problems which arise from the wording of the Song, but rather more importantly to teach that even a bitter and hated enemy, in this case the Egyptians, deserves to be buried on dry land, as is the case with anyone created in His likeness. It seems that the targumim wish to teach that there is no place for excessive happiness over the downfall of an enemy (in the spirit of the words: “when your enemy falls do not be happy” [Mishlei 24:17]) or for a disrespectful attitude to the bodies of those who have been killed.

Other arguments found in the targumim include those between the tribes of Israel as to how to proceed when confronting the Egyptian enemy: to capitulate, to fight or to die by their own hand (this tradition is also found in the works of the Samaritan peitan [liturgical poet] Marqah) and between Moses and the sea, which refuses to open up before one born of woman, until God himself intervenes and in the argument and forces the sea to capitulate. The addition of these arguments strengthens the impression made by the Song, enables the translator to present his listeners with a dramatic story with many participants and through this to present the messages that they see as being important. Since every translator adds something of their own, their listeners are exposed each time to a new and different translation, which definitely add to the level of attentiveness and enjoyment.

Professor Avigdor Shenan
Department of Hebrew Literature

Ancient Literature – Memar Marqah

At the basis of the faith and culture of the Samaritans, with roots tracing back to ancient times, lies three works. The first in status is the Torah. The Samaritans hold the Torah as being holy, but their version is not always identical to ours. The rest of the books of the Bible, the Prophets and Writings, do not have the same stature in the eyes of the Samaritans since they separated from the Jewish nation before these books were recognized as holy. The book which is second in status is a translation of the Torah to Samaritan Aramaic, a translation which has a clear link to the Aramaic translations created amongst chazal (see the main section above). The composition which is third in status is “Memar Marqah”, a work by the great Samaritan writer, Marqah, who lived in the land of Israel in the third and forth centuries.

“Memar Marqah” (i.e. the words/article of Marqah) is written in Samaritan Aramaic and it can be presented as a Midrash on part of the Torah, beginning at the burning bush (Shemot chapter 3) and ending with the story of the death of Moses (end of the book of Devarim). Actually it is not really one composition but rather a number of works which were gathered together and they can be divided into six books, with the first five being very similar in character and containing extended descriptions of the Torah stories:

1. “The Book of Wonders”, which tells of the exodus from Egypt and the plagues;
2. Homiletical commentaries on the Song of the Sea;
3. A composition which deals with the commandments of the Torah;
4. A commentary on the poem beginning “Haazinu” (Devarim 32), known within it as the “Great Song”, which has a special status to the Samaritans;
5. A dramatic description of the death of Moses.

The sixth book is different to those preceding it, as it does not relate to the verses of the Torah but rather derives interpretations from the values of the Hebrew letters.

Within this work there are many homiletical interpretations of verses from the Torah, piyutim (liturgical poems) and songs, discussions on issues of faith and knowledge, ethical writings and so forth, and actually it is a type of collection of Samaritan traditions, which are dated to about the same time as the Amoraim in the land of Israel. Many of the traditions in this work were drawn from Jewish sources or reached it (as it reached chazal) from works which preceded them, the works of the Second Temple period. With the help of “Memar Marqah” we can sometimes work out the time period of traditions which appear in the literature of chazal or learn about their history and development. In this work there sometimes appear traditions connected to the Bible which are not known to us from chazal and researchers are unsure whether they are Jewish traditions which have disappeared from our literature or whether they constitute an independent tradition.

“Memar Marqah” deals intensively with the character of Moses, because Moses has a special status in the Samaritan religion. One of the basic principles of the Samaritan religion – along with belief in God, the Torah and Mount Gerizim as a holy place – is that Moses was the only prophet that ever existed (since the book of Prophets, as stated, was not holy in their eyes). The messianic figure in Samaritan tradition in called “Taheb” (meaning “he who returns” or “he who causes to return”) and he will be a “prophet like Moses” and will be active, like him, for a period of forty years.

Design – Tiles and Bricks

In contrast to what is generally accepted in the Bible, where verses are written in a continuous sequence with the occasional space between them, there are a few chapters in which we find that the writing is set out in a visually unusual manner, in a poetry like form.

The most common format found in biblical poetry, as is known, as correspondent hemistich, a format which is characterized by the second hemistich paraphrasing what is said by the first, in different words and different nuances of meaning. Graphically this is represented by each pair of hemistiches on one line separated by a space, for example:

Listen oh heavens and I will speak and the earth will hear the words of my mouth
My doctrine shall drop as the rain my speech shall distil as the dew;
As the small rain upon the grass and as the showers upon the herb

The whole of the poem “Ha’azinu” is written in this form, even in places where it is difficult to identify correspondence between the hemistiches. This style of writing is also known from the scrolls of the Judean desert (Dead Sea scrolls) which are from second temple times.

The format of the Song of the Sea (Shemot 15:1-19) and the Song of Deborah (Shoftim 5) commonly used in biblical manuscripts and as a result also in printed Bibles, is unique. The song is not divided into lines and hemistiches according to its content, but rather preserves a constant format of two or three parts alternately. This style of writing is described in the Talmud as follows: “Rabbi Zeora R’ Yirmiyah in the name of Rav [said]: The Song of the Sea and the Song of Devorah are written tile upon brick and brick upon tile” (Megilla 3,4 [up to 4b]), in other words, writing above an open space in the next line and vice versa, in the same way a builder lays bricks to build a wall.

While this format creates a strong impression the reader, it is not necessarily a suitable format for the content of a poem and to its division of hemistiches. This is especially true of the words which stand on their own at the sides of the pages and seem cut off from their hemistich, as we see in the following:

saying: I will sing to Hashem, for He is highly exalted; Horse
and his rider He has thrown into the sea. Hashem is my strength and song and will
be my salvation; this is my God, and I will glorify Him My God

According to this method, one cannot regard the ends of lines as a space which divides between words and one reads a word standing at the end of a line together with the word at the beginning of the next line.

The Jerusalem Talmud points out (ibid) another way in which the Bible was formatted, but this time it is not part of a song: “The ten sons of Haman (Esther 9:6-10) and the kings of Canaan (Yehoshua 12:9-24) are written tile upon tile and brick upon brick”, as we saw above with the poem “Ha’azinu”. The Talmud also explains the special format used homiletically: “that every building built like this does not stand”, meaning that placing brick upon brick will result in an unstable building that is likely to collapse and here we have an attempt to connect between the format used for writing things and the significance given to them.