"All Those Going Out of the Gate of His City": Have the Translations Got It Yet?
The phrase כל־יצאי שער עירו (Gen 34:24a, b) is part of the narrator's summary of the Shechemites' response to the circumcision proposal. The lexical and semantic evidence supports a military collocation for the phrase. Moreover, the language surrounding Abraham's transaction at the ci...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2007
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| In: |
Bulletin for biblical research
Year: 2007, Volume: 17, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-52 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The phrase כל־יצאי שער עירו (Gen 34:24a, b) is part of the narrator's summary of the Shechemites' response to the circumcision proposal. The lexical and semantic evidence supports a military collocation for the phrase. Moreover, the language surrounding Abraham's transaction at the city gate with Ephron (Gen 23:10b, 18b) is shown to be an inadequate semantic parallel, depending more on culture and architecture. This article argues that the repetition of the phrase in the same verse (34:24a, b) reflects the narrator's rhetorical skill that "humanizes" a catastrophe, underscoring its distributive and irreversible state. By arguing more for "elders" or "citizens," the translations have missed the narrator's association of the circumcised group with a war idiom. |
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| ISSN: | 2576-0998 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Bulletin for biblical research
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/26424193 |