Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Bridegroom of blood

Here is a passage that has confused commentators to no end:Exodus 2:24-26.Ehrlich notes that hatan in Arabic means cut,circumcise.now the passage begins to make sense.Moses failed to circumcise his son.YHVH meets him on the way and seeks to kill him.Since Moses is being attacked,Zipporah performs the circumcision and says bridegroom of blood."Bridegroom"in the sense of circumcised one. Father-in-law in Hebrew is Hoten, i.e. the present participle of to circumcise.He must have performed the operation as a pre-nuptial rite.Ehrlich says the blood indicates the violence being done to Moses.See also Genesis 34:14 where Jacob's sons insist on the rite for Hamor to marry Dinah.Ehrlich says she repeated the words "bridegroom of blood"only and the rest "regarding circumcision"is a marginal gloss that got in the text.I think the whole phrase is a gloss beginning with "she then said ..."Now he solves also with the same root a difficult problem in I Samuel 18:21.Saul says you can be hatan(reflexive verb) in two ways right now.He will be related by marriage and my circumciser of the Philistines.What an exegete!

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