Bible Review

For a discussion of the sea/land opposition in Exodus 15, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 87–94.

The verb occurs only here. Others render it “pass through.”

The phrase might mean “the outlying towns of Judea.”

The Masoretic text reads, ungrammatically, tenah, which is presumed to mean “give.” I have followed others in vocalizing the word tunah, which then makes good sense as “told” or “recounted.”

Mitchell Dahood, a commentator ever alert to Ugaritic backgrounds, made the same suggestion, rather more confidently. See his Psalms I (Garden City, New York, 1966), pp. 50–51.

Yeshurun Keshet, The Poetry of the Bible (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, 1954), p. 126.

Cf. remark of Gaster, Dead Sea Scriptures, p. 392. Compare, however, the observation of Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings, p. 108, note 1.

In a pointed text this would read: ’m yoÆliÆd yhwh ’t hammaµsûiÆah\.

For translations see Andre Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1969), pp. 104–109; Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures in English Translation with Introduction and Notes (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 3rd ed., 1976), pp. 438–442; Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1974), pp. 118–121.

McCarter, 2 Samuel, Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), p. 207.