Annotatio LXV

”Is it not so that, if you do well, you shall receive?” — Genesis 4:7

The Septuagint interpreters, in the interpretation of that sentence of God which Jerome translated — “Is it not so that, if you do well, you shall receive? but if [you do] ill, shall not your sin at once be present at the doors? but its appetite [shall be] under you, and you shall have dominion over it”¹ — threw everything into confusion, and strayed vehemently from the truth of the Hebrew context, rendering thus: οὐκ ἐὰν ὀρθῶς προσενέγκῃς, ὀρθῶς δὲ μὴ διέλῃς, ἥμαρτες· ἡσύχασον· πρὸς σὲ ἡ ἀποστροφὴ αὐτοῦ — that is, “Hast thou not sinned, if thou hast rightly offered, but not rightly divided? Be still: to thee [is] its returning.”² Of which words there is nothing in the Hebrew, as Jerome testifies in the Hebrew Questions. Augustine, Bishop of Kissamos, indicating the cause of this error, brought forward the annotation written below: “Who would be of so keen a genius as to be able to dig out any sense from these words? What, I beseech, is ‘to thee [is] its returning’? — of which [sin] it [the passage] had made no mention. For where in the Hebrew it is ‘At the doors your sin lies down,’ they rendered ἡσύχασον, that is, ‘Be still.’” We see, therefore, how necessary Jerome’s edition was. From this passage, certainly, it is also detected that the Septuagint did not so exquisitely understand Hebrew grammar; the cause, therefore, that they translated this passage so variously and so obscurely proceeded from [ignorance of] grammar.

For what Jerome translated — “Is it not so, if you do well” (the comma being placed here) — “Is it not so, if you make a good offering” (namely שְׂאֵת, se’et) — they rendered ὀρθῶς προσενέγκῃς [if you rightly offer]. The second part — “but if you do not rightly divide” (וְאִם לֹא תֵיטִיב לַפֶּתַח, ve-im lo theitiv la-pettach) — these Hebrew words they understood in this manner: “And if you do not do well unto dividing.” For this word pettach [פֶּתַח], since it is a verbal noun signifying a “door,” they thought to be the infinitive פתה, phata, that is, “to open” — so that they translated, “And if you do not do well unto opening”; and it is a very great hallucination [blunder]. And that they render “you have sinned,” and not “sin,” happened on the same occasion: for חַטָּאת, chatath, they thought to be the second person from חטא, chata, that is, “he sinned” — but chatath means “sin” [the noun], whereas chatatha is the second person, “you have sinned.” And they easily fell into this error, since in their time the Hebrew codices did not have the little marks — that is, the vowels. And that they render “Be still,” that is רֹבֵץ, robetz — which is a participle — they reckoned to be the imperative; whereas the imperative is formed thus, רְבוּץ, rebutz, but the participle [is] robetz. But why did they not consider that there would be no sense to their words, if they were translated in that manner?