Gen 24.63: Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide - [לָשׂוּחַ Hebrew, laasuwach (OT:7742), used only here, and supposed = laasoyim; Septuagint, hadolescheesai, to meditate, or to pray.]
Jamieson, Fausset, & Brown comment masterfully:
"But neither of these expressions conveys the full meaning of the original. The Syriac renders it to walk; and Gesenius suggests that the original text might probably be laashuwT, to go to and fro in the field (Job 1:7; 2 Sam 24:2,8). Blunt, accepting the present as the true reading, says, 'The leading idea suggested seems to be an anxious, a reverential, a painful, a depressed state of mind; and Issac went out into the field, not directly to pray, but to give ease to a wounded spirit in solitude. What more likely than that the loss of his mother-an event that had happened not long before (Gen 23) - was the subject of his mournful mediations on this occasion. But this conjecture is reduced almost to a certainty by a few words dropped incidentally at the end of the chapter - "Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." The agreement of this later incident with what had gone before is not set forth in our version, and a scene of very touching and picturesque beauty impaired, if not destroyed' ('Undesigned Coincidences')."
No comments:
Post a Comment