Every year, come the 7th day of Passover, I am reminded of it again—how (in my view) an 8th-Century Jewish politician tried to ram something down the throats of his fellow-Jews and got the usual response of “two Jews, three opinions.”
As we read the Haftarah from Chapter 22 of Second Samuel, we come again to that last verse where it says, “Migdol yeshu’ot malko”—“A tower of salvation is his King.” Only it wasn’t written that way. The consonants of the written text say “Magdil yeshu’ot malko”—He gives abundant salvation to His king [and deals graciously with His anointed, to David and his descendants forever.] It is written, in other words, the same way as the end of Psalm 18.
Why, then, did the Masoretes vocalize II Samuel 22:51 as “migdol” when the consonants read “magdil”?
Here is my pet theory.
Roll back the calendar to the centuries after the Moslem invasions. The Abbasids established a mighty empire—the Caliphate—with Baghdad as their capital. They forcibly converted to monotheism any pagans who stood in their way. They graciously made an exception of the Jews and Christians—the “peoples of the Book”—on condition that they governed themselves according to an approved religious regime of their own faith-community.
Under these circumstances, the rabbis of Babylonia rose to new heights of prestige. Their interpretation of the Talmud was authoritative for Jews throughout the Muslim realm. They also took care to establish an official liturgy—the first Authorized Jewish Prayer Book.
High in the prestige rankings of that time was the Exilarch, the secular head of the Jewish community, who thought he was a descendant of the Davidic line, and therefore could regard himself as the Messiah of his generation. Certain prayers were instituted in his behalf, such as the blessing “et tzemach David” in the Amidah, praying for the restoration of the Davidic lineage in the Jewish homeland.
In this context, it seems pretty clear that the verse “Magdil yeshu’ot malko ve-oseh chesed li-Meshicho, le-David u-lezar’o ad olam” was probably inserted into the Grace After Meals in this period, also as a token of glorification of the Exilarch. ("He increases the salvation of His king...")
But just as there are Jews in each generation who can’t stand the current political leadership, you can bet that there were Jews of that period who couldn’t stand the self-important stuffed shirt who bore the title of Exilarch. When it came time to say grace after meals, they were looking for a way to avoid this obsequious singing of his praises.
They found it.
Since the vocalization of the Hebrew Biblical text was still pretty fluid at that time (there were three competing traditions of vocalization just making their start), it was easy to claim that however so-and-so claimed the text should be read, wasn’t the correct way to read it. We have countless midrashim with the punch-line “al tikrei” — don’t read it X, read it Y.
So just because the consonants of a particular word read MGDYL didn’t mean you had to read it MaGDiYL. You could say that the Y and V are interchangeable, and read it MiGDoVL.
That profoundly changes the syntax of the phrase. Instead of “[God] Increases the Salvation of His king [= the Exilarch]”—glorifying the Exilarch— you could understand the phrase “A Tower of Salvation is his King [= God]. It is a Jewish truism that God is the one really worthy of glorification, not any flesh-and-blood mortal.
If the Exilarch-of-the-moment’s popularity rating was under 40%, then this stratagem probably caught on like wildfire and became the favored reading of the verse, especially at the public recitation of Grace After Meals. From then, it was a simple matter, when the last recension of the vocalization of the Bible was made, for this vocalization to be accepted as the “Kere” (vocalized version) overriding the “Ketiv” (written version) of II Samuel 22:51.
That’s my thought-for-the day for 7th day Pesah. Hope you enjoyed your holidays!
No comments:
Post a Comment