At the onset of this bizarre chapter, the Ark of the Covenant, the closest thing that the so-called Iconoclastic Israel has to the representation of the Divine, is held hostage by the Philistines. They won the battle and recognized this icon’s potential strength, even though it was not able to secure victory for Israel. The ark is taken to the Temple of Dagon in the seaside city of Ashdod. Dagon, often depicted as a hybrid of fish and human, topples over when the ark is positioned in its temple. The following morning, mysteriously, Dagon is found lying down, head and hands cut off, across the threshold, like a butchered fish. The Philistines are horrified but the worst is yet to come. In the following days, assumed as divine punishment, the people of Ashdod are stricken by a mysterious proctological plague that has had biblical scribes, translators and scholars argue over ever since. What was it that they suffered, and why does it matter?
Before we go down that rabbit hole (sorry) here’s some time sensitive context.
Today’s date on the Jewish calendar is the 9th of Tevet, and it’s the second of three dark days of mourning that have mostly vanished from popular custom, even among the most pious.
A 2,000 year old tradition maintains that on the 8th of Tevet the Septuagint - first translation of the Torah into Greek, conducted by seventy Jewish elders, was completed. Commissioned by the king who wanted to have a full library of ancient texts, and possibly for the benefit of the large community of Greek speaking Jews throughout the empire, this can be seen as a wonderful literary achievement and cause for celebration. But for those in the Jewish community concerned about excessive access to our secrets and the slippery slope of assimilation into world culture - this day became dark, accompanied by fasting and mourning. In the Talmudic Tractate Ta’anit, dealing with fast days, is written: “On the eighth of Tevet the Torah was written in Greek during the days of King Ptolemy and darkness was in the world for three days.”
The 10th of Tevet, marking the third of these dark days, was rebranded over time to be the day on which political calamities overtook the Jewish people and remained as a minor fast day. In 1950 the Israeli rabbinate designated it as the official day of mourning for all Holocaust survivors for whom no death date or burial site is known. This is the day on which my family honors my father’s mother’s memory. But only in recent years I discovered that this dark day is much older and stranger, echoing ancient fears about being too popular or part of the world, about the tensions between sacred and secular.
What has all this to do with today’s chapter? One weird word, lost and gained in translation.
The Philistines who live in Ashdod, guilty of keeping the ark captive, are stricken by an illness that is written one way, read aloud another way, and translated in at least three different ways. It is one of the few such words in the Bible that already in its ‘original’ transmission carries editorial misgivings and concerns.
וַתִּכְבַּ֧ד יַד־יְהֹוָ֛ה אֶל־הָאַשְׁדּוֹדִ֖ים וַיְשִׁמֵּ֑ם וַיַּ֤ךְ אֹתָם֙ (בעפלים) [בַּטְּחֹרִ֔ים] אֶת־אַשְׁדּ֖וֹד וְאֶת־גְּבוּלֶֽיהָ׃
“The hand of Adonai lay heavy upon the Ashdodites, and He wrought havoc among them: He struck Ashdod and its territory- with hemorrhoids.”
But this unfortunate malady is already a translator’s choice. The original Hebrew in all manuscripts has two options, one of them in brackets. And as early as the Mishna, readers debate what this may mean, and in Tractate Megillah the sages teach: “All of the verses that are written in the Torah in a coarse manner are read in a refined manner. For example, The term “with hemorrhoids [bafolim]” is read bateḥorim.”
hemorrhoids is the common translation of the spoken version of this word tehorim. The actual written word is vocalized ofalim, meaning more vague sense of “swellings” or “tumors.” There is some version in which this has to do with an excessive population of mice, perhaps on the ships that were the pride of Ashdod. In the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate the term means something like a pain “in the seat,” “in the part of your body from which excrement is cast out”.
The ark became a pain in the Philistine's ass.
Were our ancients ambivalent about talking dirty, or is there more hidden here about supernatural powers and cultic aspects that were later deemed too damning to be publicly acknowledged? It’s difficult to discern. The current text of the Bible was established by the Masorete ben Asher in Tiberias in 930 CE and this is known as the Masoretic Text. It includes this two-worded version of this (and other verses in the following chapters where this situation comes up again.) But thanks to scholarship, and as close reading of the Septuagint, the Aramaic Targum, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Latin version, the Vulgate, and the texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls show, -- errors may have crept into the text before the Masoretic Text had been established. Or, rather, the ancient versions may be based on traditions different from that finally recorded in the Masoretic Text.
Anyway. The people of Ashdod are not happy and demand change. The ark is carried to two other Philistine cities, Gat, and then Ekron, where the same situation repeats. What now?
The strange story continues for two more painful chapters, and while nobody still fasts today, and few recall the ancient three-day fast over the translation, tomorrow is a minor fast day, observed by for some who pause to embody ancient pains, recall how traumas lost in translation keep echoing in our bodies, minds and memories, and how fasting from food and focusing on factors that diminish human dignity can actually be a noble way to add meaning to the first day of this new year. Perhaps as one more ways to lean towards healing?
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Reminds me a little of the plague that befell the Egyptians when Sarai was captive there.