The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

ALEXANDER The Targum of the Song of Songs 327
(4) the mixed multitude and the strangers who were among them said: 'He
is able (5) to dry up the water, but the mud he is not able to dry up!' At
that hour the wrath of the Lord waxed hot against them and (6) he would
have drowned them in the waters of the sea, just as Pharaoh and his
mares, chariots and horsemen were drowned, had it not been for Moses
the prophet (7) who spread out his hands in prayer and (8) turned back
from them the wrath of the Lord. (9) He and the righteous of that generation
opened their mouths, recited the song and (10) passed through the
midst of the sea on dry land, on account of the merit of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, the beloved of the Lord.
The targumist, following his normal procedure, contextualizes the
unrubricated speech of the Song of Songs to a significant moment in
the sacred history. Song 1.9, he claims, was addressed by God to
Israel at the time of the exodus. This contextualization is not arbitrary,
but is based on the fact that the targumist detects in the Hebrew
of Song 1.9 a clear echo of the account of the exodus in the Torah. To
him it cannot be accidental that the Song's le-susati be-rikhevei far 1 oh
is verbally so close to kol sus rekhev par'oh in Exod. 14.9. His
retelling of the story of the exodus has, naturally, many echoes of the
pentateuchal narrative—the more obvious are marked by underlining
in the translation—and these can be compared with the pentateuchal
Targumim. 14 Space permits me to highlight only two examples:
(a) No. 3: 'deserts full of fiery serpents' (madberayya de-malyan
hiwayan qalari) echoes Deut. 8.15, ha-molikhekha ba-midbar... nahash
saraf. The rendering of nahash saraf by hiwayan qalan is distinctive,
and agrees with Onqelos. Neofiti, by way of contrast, has hiwayan
serafin, taking over the saraf of the original Hebrew. We appear to
14. The 'quotations', apart from the two discussed in the text (nos. 3 and 6), are
as follows: 1 = Exod. 14.8-9, 'Pharaoh pursued after the children of Israel; for the
children of Israel went out with a high hand. And the Egyptians pursued after them,
all the horses [kol sus] and chariots of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his host'. 2 =
Exod. 14.3, 'The desert has shut them in [sagar 'aleihem]'. 4 = Num. 11.4, The
mixed multitude [asafsuf] that was among them'; Exod. 12.38, 'A mixed multitude
['erev rav] went up with them'. 5 = Exod. 14.21, '(The Lord) made the sea dry land
[haravah] ; Gen. 8.13, 'The face of the ground was dry [harevu]'; cf. Ps. 66.6, 'He
turned the sea into dry land [hafakh yam le-yabbashah]'. 1 = Exod. 9.33, 'Moses
spread out his hands unto the Lord'. 8 = Exod. 32.12, 'Turn from your fierce
wrath'. 9 = Exod. 15.1, 'Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song'. 10
= Exod. 14.22, 'The children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry
ground'; 14.29, 15.19, 'The chidren of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of
the sea'; Num. 33.8, They passed through [wa-ya'avru] the midst of the sea'.