cellio | midrash, session 5

Here's the next block of text (translation and commentary below):

Since this is all one big block, I'll number the sentences and put in some transliterated guideposts. I'll also preserve punctuation.

As in the past, I'm trying for a pretty literal translation. If my goal were to publish an English version for its own sake I would take a few liberties with some of the phrasing, but since I'm doing this to improve my understanding of the Hebrew, I mostly haven't done that here. (There are some idioms where I didn't have a choice.) That said, in the future I might, without further comment, do something more informative with all the "amar lo"s ("he said to him"). I thought about that half-way through this entry and decided not to go back.

(1) "And he got up and he went" - (a) satan was before him on the path and he appeared to him in the form of an old man. (2) And he said to him: to where are you going? (3) He said to him: to pray. (4) He said to him: one who is going to pray, why does he have fire and a slaughtering-knife (ma-akhelet) in his hand and wood on his shoulder?

(Beginning of line 4:) (5) He (Avraham) said to him: lest we will linger (tarry) a day or two, and we will slaughter, cook, and eat. (6) He (satan) said to him: old man, was I not there when the Holy One, blessed be He said to you: "take please your son"? (7) Old man, he lost (avad) your heart! (8) A son was given to you at (lit "in") 100 years, you are going to slaughter him!

(Line 7, amar lo:) (9) He said to him: on this condition (idiom). (10) He said to him: and if he tests you worse than this (idiom?), will you be able to stand? (11) He said to him: the rest I will handle. (12) He said to him: For tomorrow he says to you "spill blood" (murder a person), you will murder your son (lit spill his blood of your son). (13) He said to him: (approximately: I'll do it?) ('al m'nat kein" -- what's "m'nat"?)

(Line 10, more than halfway:) (14) As soon as he was no help to him (that is, as soon as he didn't get what he wanted from Avraham), the satan went from above (?) him and he appeared as (lit "to") a young man and he stood upon the right for Yitzchak (that is, he stood at his right side), he said to him: [edit; dropped a line before] where are you going? He said to him: to learn torah. [end edit] He said: in your life or after your death? ( 15) He said to him: is there a man who will learn after death? (16) He (satan) said to him: oh, hapless ('aluv) son of a hapless woman! (17) How many fasts did your mother fast and how many prayers did she pray (note: inferring rather than really grokking verb forms; please help) until she did not give birth (?), and this old man has gone crazy [*] and he goes to slaughter you.

[*] The word is "nishtatah", nun-shin-taf-tet-hei, and we spent a while trying to parse this. We thought nif'al at one point and then hitpalel (irregular), and Rabbi Symons tried to explain how certain letters are sometimes transposed if the word would be too hard to pronounce with correct grammar -- I didn't completely follow beyond that it involved taf and shin being transposed. If that's not happening here then the root appears to be shin-taf-tet, "crazy", but we couldn't find this form in any of the verb books he had on hand. (If that sort of weird transformation is going on, we couldn't figure out the correct root.) We decided to each consult other sources. Y'all are my other sources; any ideas? :-) (Yes, I've already tried the resident one.)

Onward. We're six lines up from the bottom, near the end. (18) Yitzchak said to him: nevertheless (idiom: "af-'al-pi-khein") I will not cross against knowledge of my maker and against a command from my father. (19) He said to him: if so, all the fine tunics that your mother made, to Yishmael [who] hates the house [of Yerushah?] -- and (idiom) you don't consider it? (20) -- (idiom:) if all doesn't enter the mind, half does (lit if there is not a thing [nakhnis] all [nakhnis] half). (21) [Chazar]? Yitzchak and he said to his father: father! See what this [one] says to me? (22) Avraham said to him: (don't pay attention to him) (doesn't seem to be literal).

We ran out of time before we ran out of story, so this will pick up next time. (That's also why the last line or so is fuzzy -- we were rushing so I didn't completely get it. Maybe we'll review that first when we reconvene.)

The satan (it seems to be mostly an indefinite noun here) is really trying to stir up trouble here. First he eggs God on to get Him to issue the command, and now he's trying to get Avraham and Yitzchak to rebel against it. It's not that he wants a particular bad outcome; it looks like he wants trouble for trouble's sake. The satan here isn't a force for evil so much as a force for chaos. (This tracks with other times I've seen the satan show up in Jewish literature.)

midrash, session 5

no subject

no subject