Annotatio CVI

”The servants of Isaac came the same day, telling him of the well, saying: We have found water.” — Genesis 26:32

The Septuagint, for what is read in the Hebrew — “The servants of Isaac came the same day, telling him of the well which they had dug, saying, We have found water; whence its name was called Abundance” — translated entirely the opposite:¹ “The servants of Isaac came and told him of the well which they had dug, saying, We have NOT found water; whence its name was called Oath.” Which interpretation Jerome, in the book On Hebrew Traditions, condemns as corrupt, saying: “For what etymology is it, that it should be called ‘Oath’ because they had not found water? — since the contrary is in the Hebrew, and Aquila and Symmachus agree that they DID find water, and that on that account the well itself was called Abundance, or Satiety.”