The peaceable kingdom (not)

A dog I know named Tuffy showed her stuff yesterday - to our horror. There was a noise behind me like the sound of a rushing wind. The quail was flying away from the dog - apparently on only one wing. She was feigning hurt so that the dog would chase her and be led away from her chicks and eggs. The owner was not happy with the dog but she was momentarily not under control.

Tuffy is a recovered dog from a reserve. She has had a tough life but has found a home. She is pleasant to be with but has a hidden hunting capability. The owner brought her back to the patio. We had not figured out that there was a nest near where we were sitting. This was not a random feint. A few moments later, mouth full of chicks, and broken eggs on the patio, the dog had done its damage.

The dog was removed from the scene. The owner buried the corpses. The mother quail (not an endangered species) was clucking mournfully in the background. The sensitive were in tears and those of us who are quick to see that we can do nothing were comforting them. A chick appeared at our feet stumbling back towards the nest. I took a piece of paper and moved it closer to the nest location - without touch. There was little language that could be shared. Consideration was given to whether the dog should live. (I did not think this was a 'sin unto death', a phrase my wife chuckled at later in the evening.)

לֹֽא־יָרֵעוּ וְלֹֽא־יַשְׁחִיתוּ בְּכָל־הַר קָדְשִׁי
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain - they will not do evil - they will not be bad - O how often the struggle with the bad dog - operating on survival - has occurred in conversation this last 24 hours. (Today though we got away for a great bike ride around Skaha Lake 25 km - and a few games of tennis before we got rained out.)

Esther and Canon

I can see that Esther has not been a well-loved book. Many have asked within both the Christian and Jewish tradition - why is this book in the Canon? I can see too that the translation of such a work will not be a slam-dunk.  I will confine myself to the Hebrew 10 chapters. I got a few books from the library but first I must just read the text slowly and then consider what it does in me.

I will be away on holiday for a week. And I am planning some more holidays in the East of Canada and Europe - can anyone suggest some activities to keep me busy in England or the Continent or North Africa between Sept 27 and Oct 8? Maybe a trip to Tripoli and rediscover the travels of Simon of Cyrene? Or a retreat somewhere - or another conference following the Oxford conference on the Psalms. (Assuming I can secure a place.)  I already have tickets from Victoria to Tel Aviv and back for October - but... what can I arrange - they can be cancelled.

Just a thought

The word satisfaction is full of meaning for me. Besides T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi, there is the final word on Job (Job 42:17). And Job died old and sated of days. And someone asked recently - what is morality?  Here is a definition in a few words. A moral act is one where the actor does not take satisfaction at another's expense. This statement is the complement of one by Bishop Stephen Neill who remarked many years ago that love is the directed action of the will for the good of another.

But there is one who gave his life for the life of the world. He invites us to use his love for our satisfaction at his expense. This is a bit like having your cake and eating it too. (For holding things together that are mutually contradictory, see this most recent post by Nicholas Knisely, the Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Arizona. I often share his posts.)

The fifth scroll

I have to come finally to the fifth scroll, Esther. I do not know yet where this will take me. My current writing has made me focus on theology as well as Hebrew translation. I find the way each book treats God has made me think about the personages in the text and their relationship as portrayed.

So Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz are very personal towards God, but the characters in Job are filled with near to far tension among the various names of God that they use. And Qohelet has its singular perspective. Lamentations is like the Psalms (as is the character of Job) in that the lament directly addresses God. This is not the case in either Ruth or Qohelet.

In Esther, a name meaning star but very similar to the Hebrew for hidden, no name of God appears at all. This is not even true of the Song where Yah appears briefly in chapter 8 and is hidden in the word play of the hosts of roe and the goodly hart. So how is God hidden in Esther - or should I even ask this question?

I have not read Esther for 33 years. I can date this because I was reading it to my children when we first came to Calgary (1977), and since we had no house, we were in a hotel and I was reading it to them at breakfast (I know, I know). A man at the next table was seriously affronted by my reading, though my voice was discreet (but I am a tenor), and he came up to me and said I should not be reading such a book to my children. So what will I learn from this book? I have been reluctant to start translating! 

Robert Alter gives it a mention in his 'Art of Biblical Narrative' and he calls this post-exilic story "a kind of fairytale - the lovely damsel, guided by a wise godfather, is made queen and saves her people - richly embellished with satiric invention; its comic art departs from historical verisimilitude in ways that pre-exilic Hebrew narrative seldom does,..." so in true literary critical form, I will be looking for these in the story -  they are not very hard to find in the first chapter.

But what is its serious underbelly?

The spring of the year

From Collages

Last night there was a beautiful light on the mountains. Early this morning, circa 6:30 AM my wife and I went for a walk on the beach.

God in Qohelet

In an earlier post on morality I note that Qohelet never uses any designation for God except Elohim and ha-Elohim - that is God with the definite article. "There is no Lord, no LORD, no El Shaddai, no El, in that book."  But what about Ecclesiastes 12:1 - remember your creator etc. Does this appearance of 'create' violate the designations of God in the text? It does seem to jump out somewhat.

Seow has much to say about whether creator is apt. The letters בּוֹרְאֶיךָ can of course spell 'your creator'. It appears to be a qal active participle with a plural ending as usual truncated when a singular second person direct object is appended. So the 'meaning' is 'the plural one creating thee.' The plural might be a plural of majesty but even though Elohim is naturally plural, it does take a singular verb form - so the phrase is rather odd.

There is another word with the same letters in BDB - p 135, meaning to be fat - or sound, healthy. And given the vav, perhaps 'well' as a symbol for wife, or 'cistern' or 'pit' for grave, as a recognition that you will die. Seow lists a number of suggested alternatives.

בּוֹר as wife seems unlikely. Qohelet seems to have no metaphor for wife in Eccl 9:9 where the author uses אִשָּׁה as expected. Cistern / pit seems even more unlikely though the word occurs in Eccl 12:6 and would perhaps provide a recurrence pattern in the poem. Both these choices are still encumbered with the plural singular conundrum.  So I stayed with 'creator' - just that one word - in tension with 'make / do' which is pervasive in Qohelet, might be enough to suggest the responsibility each of us has towards this mysterious plural One who loves us.

Psalms Diagrams refreshed

There have been a lot of improvements since I last published these diagrams. I am not changing them significantly at this time, but all the queries are now showing the Hebrew rather than the transliteration and the root algorithm is I think about 90-95% more accurate than it was. Also the identification of recurrence in the Psalms is more accurate and shows in verse order so they are easier to spot if you a colouring the text.

My first time through the psalms, I noted how often I was warned, rebuked, or corrected. This time I have occasionally glanced at the translation and jumping out at me are promises and consolation - Psalms are awesome. Read them. Here's Psalm 3 for example. Note how 'the many' continues the bruhaha of Psalm 2. [I missed the rise/arise double because of the mater.] Already in this personal individual psalm we have the anticipation of the transformation of the many through the means of the anointed king and we have the realization of security for the one in his faithfulness.

In these diagrams you will find my inimitable overdone colouring. The Hebrew is automatically coloured by transforming its gematria. The background colour of the diagram is the colour of the Psalm's gematria as a whole. The formula is  round(62.415238095*gematria(hebrew-text),0)*-1. I have no idea why it works. Mapping colour codes is very mysterious, but somehow this spreads the gematria over the 16 million range and does allows a distinction of hues in all three RGB components.

Notice the chiasm in verse 8

A Psalm of David, when he fled from the face of Absalom his son.

יְהוָה, how many my straits!

Many rising against me

Many saying of my life

'There is no victory for him in God'

Selah

But you, יְהוָה, a shield about me

my glory, and raising my head

My voice, to יְהוָה I call

and he answers me

from the hill of his holiness

Selah

I lie down, and I sleep

I awake, for יְהוָה sustains me

I am not afraid of the many many people

surrounding, set against me

Arise, יְהוָה

save me, my God

for you strike all my enemies on the cheek

teeth of the many wicked broken

To יְהוָה is victory

To your people your blessing

Selah