חיי שרה ותולדות Small Details

Two weeks ago we began our parsha (חיי שרה) with the death of Sarah and a scattered family. At the time of her death, Avraham is living in Beer Sheva and Sarah is in Kiryat Arba. By the end of the parsha we read יצחק וישמאל (Isaac and Ishmael) two brothers, separated through family trauma coming tougher to bury their father Avraham. Here רש״י reads that Ishmael has undergone תשובה (repentance). But, to some degree it feels as though the whole family has undergone a change of repentance. From the binding of Issac to the death of both Sarah and Avraham, the family must redefine itself, symbolically through Issac clearing and re-digging the wells of his father (בראשית כ״ו). Sarah’s death, the person who drove out Ishmael and his mother Hagar, also allows for Ishmael to return and bury his father alongside the brother that he once tormented.

In the subsequent parsha we transition from the lineage of Ishmael and begin with the lineage of Isaac, closing the narrative between these two brothers. Though parsha חיי שרה brings closure, תולדות opens new family conflicts. The pregnancy and birth of Essau and Jacob brings a new struggle between brother. The conflict exists not only in the narrative but also in the translation here, which we see here in בראשית כה:כה (Gensis 25:25). When Essau is named the Hebrew reads ויקראו, which means “they called”, but in the next verse we see in the Hebrew that Jacob gets the same verb in the singular ויקרא “he called”. When looking at the Septuagint we see that both these verbs are in the singular form, and even different verbs being used (ἐπωνόμασεν in v. 25 and ἐκάλεσεν in v. 26). The later Syriac and Vulgate translations also have this verb consistantly in the singular.

Small differences like this, which are many and frequent, can serve as reminders that translations serve multiple functions. For example, a translation may carry a textual tradition that is different than the Hebrew text we have. Or, the translator may be bringing their own style, changing verbs to reflect the narrative as they see it, or correcting grammar that they think is a scribal mistake (which between v. 25 and v. 26 might be easy to assume). Be it family tensions, or grammatical ones, we can over time uncover these differences with thoughtful analysis and engagement with the text through a comparative analysis (or perhaps create new conflicts through exegesis, possibly by correcting the grammar of a family member at a Shabbat table).