UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE: translations

Psalm 34 and Vav Hahefuch

This poem by King David -- which is read every Shabbat and Holiday during the morning prayers -- is some 24 verses long if organized by its alphabetical acrostic (see any Art Scroll siddur) and contains just over 50 verbs.

Throughout, King David uses normal verb tenses and forms – except for the two verbs at the end of the first verse which are in vav hahefuch.

א    לְדָוִד--    בְּשַׁנּוֹתוֹ אֶת-טַעְמוֹ, לִפְנֵי  אֲבִימֶלֶךְ; וַיְגָרְשֵׁהו, וַיֵּלַך.

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 When David fled King Saul and hid among the enemy Philistines, his true identity was discovered and he would have faced certain death except he convinced the ruler, Avimelech, and his court that he was insane; a fate the king saw as worse than death.  And so Avimelech spared his life and let him go free.

To commemorate this event, David wrote Psalm 34 and in only one spot -- twice – back to back -- uses vav hahefuch. 

This cannot be accidental, especially as vav hahefuch is almost never used in the Book of Psalms. As a collection of man-made poems praising God, the Divine vav hahefuch would not be used, but it does show up at times, and when it does, it deserves attention.

The first verse of Psalm 34 encapsulates the historical event which ends with David’s expulsion from the royal court and his safe departure from the land of the Philistines.

The standard translation and understanding is:

 

   " A Psalm of David, when he pretended to be insane before    Avimelech who drove him away and he departed.”

 

That is to say, Avimelech drove David away and David departed.

 

But by using vav hahefuch specifically and unusually here -- for these two back to back actions: the first by Avimelech (= drove away) and the second by David himself (= departed), King David, as the poet, adds a special twist and special meaning or emphasis to these words -- as he  decided to use here, and only here, the Divine vav hahefuch form.

 

Why?

 

I suggest that by doing so King David is acknowledging that it was not his own wit that outsmarted the Philistine king and his court, and that allowed him to leave Philistine territory unharmed, but rather that his ruse of insanity and his escape worked due to special Divine intervention.

 

In David’s mind, his escaping execution and expulsion by Avimelech was from God (וַיְגָרְשֵׁהו), and the second, seemingly superfluous “and he departed” (וַיֵּלַךְ) alludes to his ‘safe passage’ through the land of vengeful Philistine people – which he equally attributes to God.

 

Put simply, I suggest that King David saw this as a double miracle.  Through using vav hahefuch twice and only for these verbs of deliverance, he attests to his belief in the invisible hand of God and Divine intercession in his life and the affairs of mankind.

 

Consequently, a better, more insightful translation of these vav hahefuch verbs in English would be:

 

“A Psalm of David, when he pretended to be insane before Avimelech who drove him away (through Divine intervention) and he departed safely (through Divine intervention).”

 

Merely translating vav hahefuch forms without noting their unique and Divine link, their special intent and message, is a disservice to the text, its author and the reader.

 

Consequently, I recommend to future translators of the Hebrew Tanach that they do the following in all instances outside of the Chumash’s standard use of vav hahefuch for God as narrator:

 1. add the above bracketed “through Divine intervention” or similar phrase such as “by Divine will” “by the grace of God” and “by Divine providence”

 

2. if space and distraction are an issue, use acronyms in brackets to  clarify the vav hahefuch words such as (tDi), (bDw), (bgG) and (bDp) for the above phrases

 

3. use in a different colour, bold, italics or different font for vav hahefuch verbs – with a preface explanation of this differentiation.

 

4. combination of the above

 

In conclusion, the special use of vav hahefuch needs to be somehow ‘marked’ so the reader of English, Spanish, French or Mandarin would not miss the writer’s special acknowledgement of the hand of God in the actions he or she is describing, by using vav hahefuch, the hallmark verb form of God as the Eternal and ever present and active Divine force.

 

P.S.:   Only the 3 works associated with King Solomon: Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, are devoid of any vav hahefuch.  All other post-Chumash texts, not just prophetic works, but also all the chronicles, stories such as Ruth and Esther and Job, and some psalms incorporate the Divine vav hahefuch.

As suggested above, such vav hahefuch usage by mortal writers was done as pious affirmations of the Eternal’s active and at times extraordinary intervention in human affairs.

Finally, this pattern of special emphasis and meaning (= through Divine intervention) does not just begin with the first human text after the Chumash, Joshua, but is already present and modelled in the Divine Chumash in various sections of dialogue from Genesis onward – most notably in the “arami oved avi” declaration of Deuteronomy Ch 29, which alone of the three declarations the Jewish farmer makes before the kohen (all cited in the chapter back to back) uses vav hahefuch 12 consecutive times.