The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

HAYWARD A Portrait of the Wicked Esau 301
And by your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother: and it
shall be, that when you wander [tryd\, that you shall break his yoke from
upon your neck.
Neofiti's version of this is, at first sight, similar to that of the other
Palestinian Targums:
And by your sword you shall live, and before your brother you shall be
serving and in servitude: and it shall be, that when the sons of Jacob
labour in the Torah and keep the commandments, that they shall place the
yoke of their burden on your neck; but it shall be, that when the sons of
Jacob forsake the commandments, and restrain themselves from labouring
in the Torah, you shall have dominion over him, and you shall break the
yoke of servitude from your neck.
In three crucial matters, Neofiti differs sharply from the versions of
FTP, FTV, and the remains of two Ngls, which in other respects it
very closely resembles. First, unlike FTP and Ngl, it does not turn the
singular 'your brother' of the Hebrew into 'your brethren the Jews'.
Second, the words 'you shall be serving and in servitude' represent a
conflate of the readings of, on the one hand FTP and Onqelos 'you
shall serve', and on the other FTV and Ngl 'you shall be in servitude'.
Finally, Neofiti alone of all the Targums states that Esau will have
dominion over Jacob, wtslt byh, if the latter fails to keep the commandments
of the Torah.
The first two items are closely related. The phenomenon of
conflates in Neofiti has recently been studied by Rimon Kasher, who
shows how scribes have combined readings particularly of the various
Palestinian Targums (rarely of Palestinian Targums and Onqelos) to
produce the present text of Neofiti on many occasions. 22 If we have
such a conflate before us, and it seems likely that we do, then Neofiti
has most probably chosen deliberately not to include the further
definition of Esau's brother as 'the Jews'. Rather, Neofiti continues to
speak of Esau in the singular as 'your brother'; and when we turn to
the third peculiarity in its presentation, we note that the singular form
in the sentence 'and you shall have dominion over' reappears towards
the end of the verse, and fits awkwardly with the intervening plural
references to the 'sons of Jacob' and their burden.
One possible explanation of the present state of this verse in Neofiti
22. See R. Kasher, Targumic Conflations in the Ms Neofiti 1', HUCA 57
(1986), Hebrew section, pp. 1-19.