OldSoul....I'm sorry to say that 't does not occur in those texts as you claimed: (1) h-mwtsy' "one bringing forth" in Leviticus 22:33, (2) hw' thltk "he [is] your praise" in Deuteronomy 10:21, 'tw (the object pronoun!) tyr'w "him you will fear" in 2 Kings 17:36. Beware of assuming that 't occurs in the Hebrew in other texts where "the One" occurs in the NWT because "the One" is used in the NWT in one text where 't occurs in the Hebrew. Interestingly, pseudo-scholar made exactly this error in an earlier thread with respect to the lamed preposition in Jeremiah (i.e. assuming other cases of "at" in the chapter were cases of Hebrew le because the NWT renders le as "at" in one other verse).
Scholar: Zechariah 12:10
by OldSoul 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OldSoul
Leolaia,
I understand. Since I am unable to read Hebrew, bringing up those other texts as proof texts was a bad idea since doing so relied on the scholarship of celebrated WT scholars. Thank you for the correction.
I am trying to argue the point from the perspective of Scholar, taking into full consideration the august wisdom of the celebrated WT scholars. I am asking him for the rationale behind eliminating from the translation of Zechariah any indication of YHWH being looked to, whether distinguished from the one pierced or not. Is there any reason for eliminating looking to YHWH in the verse?
Respectfully,
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Leolaia
Old Soul....It is not just the NWT. Many Christian translations smuggle the Johannine interpretation into the OT text. The Jerusalem Bible, for instance even omits the "me" (tho indicates in a footnote that it is in the Hebrew) and thus renders the passage as the following: "They will look on the one whom they have pierced"
To give a little synopsis, the text is ambiguous because the 't could be taken in a number of ways. I'm no Hebrew scholar either; maybe Narkissos or Alleymom might give a sense of which is more natural in the Hebrew, but the Greek versions clearly show that they interpreted the syntax in different ways. Aquila took 't as a preposition "with", and clearly distinguished the "pierced one" from the divine "me". The LXX distinguished the two as well, by taking 't + 'shr as a phrase that indicates substitution or cause, "instead of, because of" (this may reflect an idiom also reflected in the JPSB rendering, but I'm not up on idioms), while Theodotion appears to have taken 't as a simple object marker and conflated the divine "me" with the one that was pierced. Another ambiguous text with respect to 't + 'shr seems to be 1 Samuel 30:23: "You must not do this with what || on account of what || after what ('t 'shr) Yahweh has given to us"; the LXX here has taken it as houtós meta "thus with".
I personally find the interpretation that identifies the divine "me" with the pierced one less likely than the alternative because of the abrupt change in pronoun from "me" to "him".
Any other ideas? What are the common critical interpretations of the passage?
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Leolaia
Is there any reason for eliminating looking to YHWH in the verse?
Nope. The oracle begins claiming to be "the word of Yahweh about Israel" and declaring, "It is Yahweh who speaks" (12:1). Any instance of the first person pronoun, without there being a change in speaker, would thus be in reference to Yahweh. Thus in v. 9 Yahweh says "I will set myself to destroy all the nations", and v. 10 he says that "I will pour a spirit of kindness" on Jerusalem, again the divine voice. The reference to "me" in the very next clause would thus obviously refer to Yahweh. Thus, "looking to me" is "looking to Yahweh". The problem with John, however is that he omits pros me "to me" entirely. If the text that he reproduced was identical to that of Theodotion (i.e. including pros me), then he would clearly be identifying Jesus with Yahweh (= the Lord in the Greek OT). But because he omits it, the people are simply looking at the pierced one without this individual (or individuals) being identified with Yahweh.
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Hellrider
I have no clue about hebrew either, but I bow in awe to Leolaias knowledge on this! From Leolaias post, I understand that the Zecheraiah-text probably doesn`t mean that it is God (YHWH) speaking in the "they will look to---" - passage. but from my understanding, the author of John sees it otherwise. He very much interprets the Zecheraiah-passage as "they will look to me, whom they have pierced"? - or at least he is trying to indicate that this is what the Zecheraiah-text meant. And the "disreprancy" between these two opinions (the opinion of whoever wrote Zecheraiah), and whoever wrote John - well, this disreprancy would allow for ... new meaning, new interpretation. The Bible surely is an enigma.
Oh, if the poor JWs only knew these things. Their little WT-minds would overload and smoke would come out of their ears.
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Qcmbr
Jehovah is Jesus - its so plain and obvious..
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Narkissos
A few miscellaneous remarks:
Interestingly enough the NWT footnote has:
Which means that the NWTranslators did interpret the Masoretic Hebrew text ("M") as identifying Yhwh ("me") with "the one whom (they pierced)." Only they chose not to translate from the Hebrew but from the Greek quotation in John; the appeal to Theodotion ("Th") is only partly valid inasmuch as Theodotion retained the "to me" (as Leolaia pointed out)."To the One whom," Th and Joh 19:37; MVg, "to me whom."
The Jerusalem Bible, for instance even omits the "me" (tho indicates in a footnote that it is in the Hebrew) and thus renders the passage as the following: "They will look on the one whom they have pierced"
It might be of interest that the 1998 French Bible de Jérusalem restores the MT: "ils regarderont vers moi au sujet de celui qu'ils ont transpercé" ("they will look to me about the one whom they have pierced"). Footnote: "According to the Hebrew and Greek, God identifies with his representative. Theodotion understood "to the one whom they have pierced," and this reading is endorsed by John. The death of the pierced one happens in an eschatological context: raising of the siege against Jerusalem, national mourning and opening of a salvific source. Thus a mysterious suffering and death will occur as part of the realisation of salvation. This is a parallel, although nationalised and narrowed, to the Servant character in Isaiah 52:13--53:12..."maybe Narkissos or Alleymom might give a sense of which is more natural in the Hebrew, but the Greek versions clearly show that they interpreted the syntax in different ways. Aquila took 't as a preposition "with", and clearly distinguished the "pierced one" from the divine "me".
In view of Aquila's systematic rendering of 't by sun ("with"), even where it is most obvious that 't is the accusative marker and not "with" (e.g. Genesis 1:1, which becomes totally incomprehensible in Aquila's "Greek": "In the beginning God created with the heavens and with the earth"), I doubt anything can be concluded as to his interpretation of 't. The extant Hebrew text is quite awkward and the connection between "me" and "the one whom they pierced" is far from clear imo. -
Leolaia
Hmmm, this is pretty weird. I looked up the verse in the 1984 Reference Bible and there is a footnote:
10# "To the One whom," Th and Joh 19:37; MVg, "to me whom."
The rendering that the New World Translation Committee opted for this passage is "to the One whom" but the authority for this is not the Hebrew but "Th" (Theodotion) and John 19:37. In actuality, Theodotion according to Field's authoritative edition of the Hexapla had kai epiblepsontai pros me, eis hón exekentésan "and they will look towards me, to the one they have pierced", so the NWT is in error. And not only is Theodotion miscited but it leaves only an NT passage ... John 19:37 ... as the sole basis for rendering this phrase in Zechariah: NOT the Hebrew MT, or any manuscript of the OT, only an isolated quotation in a later work.
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Leolaia
Thanks, Narkissos....I posted that without seeing you checked the footnote as well; we were thinking along similar lines.
I think I might take a look at what the critical commentaries have to say about interpreting this verse...it's an interesting problem. Too bad the Qumran texts are too fragmentary at this passage to be of any use.
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Narkissos
As I have no recent commentary on Zechariah at hand now, I just reviewed a few occurrences of 'eth-'asher in the MT.
While the overwhelming majority refers to non-personal objects (e.g, 'eth-asher `asah, "what he has done"; 'eth-'asher dibber, "what he has said"), it is sometimes used for a personal object (e.g. Exodus 20:7, "Yhwh will not acquit anyone who misuses his name"; 33:12, "you have not let me know whom you will send with me"). It may even be collective (this is interesting in view of the interpretation Leolaia offered), e.g. Numbers 33:4: "while the Egyptians were burying whom the LORD had struck down among them, all the firstborn". What I failed to find thus far is an example where 'eth-asher serves to introduce a further qualification for an already determined object (which should be the case in Zechariah 12:10 according to the traditional interpretation "they will look to me, the one whom they pierced).
Edit: finally I found one possibly relevant example in Ezekiel 23:22, "I will rouse against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust (hinneni me`ir eth-me'ahavaikh `alaikh 'eth-asher naq`ah naphshekh mehem)". All in all, I think the traditional explanation (in which Yhwh identifies with his pierced servant) is at least a plausible one...