Thoughts on Exodus 17

I looked this morning at Exodus 17 within the story: the beginning of the migrations (chapter 16) in the wilderness right after the great song of the sea (15). Chapter 17 is choc-a-bloc with imagery: the grumbling about water (Psalms 95), the rod of Moses, and the rock that Paul writes - 'is Christ' and the striking of the rock once. And here we have Caleb's son, Hur, assisting the priesthood (Aaron) and the law (Moses) in the battle that Joshua (Jesus) wages against Amalek (often identified with 'the flesh').

How does one begin to unravel such a tangle of potential 'interpretations'? Even if we take Amalek as a symbol, we run the risk of dehumanizing the people for the sake of the image. If we take Amalek as 'flesh' vs spirit, we risk losing the marvel of the life of flesh that we have, and the image of the Word becoming flesh, and the beauty of our genetic programming. I have just finished a long study of genetics by Siddhartha Mukherjee - the flesh is really astonishing as a piece of the created order - or should I say, the disorder of natural programming!

As a 'translator' I think through the music of the te'amim and stay close to the Hebrew word order - these are huge constraints. And I leave in the ambiguity of who is who in the sentence. But recognize the potential for what is hidden in the words, the sudden appearance of Amalek in this context underlines a continual struggle in the human spirit to know the power of being lifted up as Moses was by the faithfulness of his companion Aaron, and the strength of the faithful Caleb, companion of Joshua. 

So this chapter is the memorial, and it remains unclear who is the 'he' in verse 1 'and he said' within the immediate context.

Amos 17, 16 - the symbolism of Amalek

I am responding here to a comment from Claude Mariottini on this post.  My comment was probably not clear and so did not make it past the moderator. Claude writes: 

Your translation is good and reflects the Hebrew. However, the speaker (Moses) was speaking to Joshua. Your translation seems not to address Moses’ words to Joshua.

True, there is ambiguity in the text and I as translator refuse to remove it. I was reading a post from 2009 of my own. It expresses exactly why I refuse to take this degree of power over the text. 

"Difficult - but when you read this slowly - all sorts of decisions become apparent that have nothing to do with communicating in the present to a target audience. Important though that may be - it is not really in your power as translator to do the work that your reader must do. What is in your power as you develop it is to choose words that match in tone and form the language that your ancient poet used. Your primary job is to communicate with that ancient writer and only secondarily to form a sentence or poem for the modern reader."

Hmmm - really? I looked even further back to 2007 - when I was less than a year old in my Hebrew study.