Shemini - Moshe’s reaction to tragedy
Posted on April 15th, 2007 by cyberdov
After the death of Nadav and Avihu, Moshe spoke to Aaron. The usual approximate translation is:
“This is what God had said, Through those who are close to me I will be sanctified, and I will be honored among the entire people”.
I noticed that the original Hebrew is a little ambiguous. The key words are:
Ekadesh - which I translated as ‘I will be sanctified’, and
Ekaved - ‘I will be honored’.
However, ekadesh can also refer to separation rather than sanctity, and ekaved can also mean ‘I will be heavy’. So, could Moshe have been saying, “Isn’t that just like God - to separate from those who seek to come close, and to come down hard on the people” ?
Probably not - but the fact that the ambiguity is there is intriguing.
Very interesting - it could also explain why Moshe says “this is what God meant when he said” (a pretty rare formulation I think) and not “this is what God said”. According to your translation Moshe himself could be playing around with a statement originally made by God to mean the standard translation but knowingly utilized by Moshe (with clever word play) to make a different (or concurrent) point.
I’m not sure what you mean - “Hu asher diber Adonay lemor” sounds similar to the usual formulation “Vayedaber Adonay el Moshe lemor”?
I’m going by the JPS translation of “hu asher diber lemor”
they translate it as “this is what the Lord meant when he said” which sounds different than “this is what the Lord said” - I guess the “hu” is unusual but maybe not. Either way, the ambuiguity of the words is very interesting.