The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

394 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
The innovative usage of topnig in v. 23, and the standard promise of
victory for the righteous in the Targum, is the occasion for the usage
of D^DT in v. 24, rather than a tight coordination between the root "or
and the meaning 'triumph'. A contextual reading of the Targum might
be taken to suggest that piis in Aramaic may stand as the equivalent of
its Hebrew cognate, and that both convey their senses within the general
sphere of meaning of righteousness.
In any case, whatever was the case in the transmission of Tobit, the
meturgemanin of Isaiah had no difficulty in sorting out the difference
between 'ST and "OT as a consideration of Isa. 1.16 will show:
MT:
Tg:
Even here, where a moral dimension is introduced into the exegesis of
rot in the Hebrew text, the Meturgeman renders it with 'Di, not '?T. T?T
appears in Palestinian Aramaic of the first century as 'be innocent', 46
which is the fundamental sense in the Targum, as 5.23 illustrates:
Here the cognate of pis might have been used, as it is in the Masoretic
Text, but it was not, presumably because '2* is used more naturally in
forensic or legal contexts. 47
By now, one might suspect that 2np pi^tt 1 ) in Dan. 8.14 is to be preferred
as the lectio difficilior which explains the others, and that it is
neither a barbarism nor in any significant sense a translation
46. Cf. 11Q Targ. Job 9.[8] (for IDT in Job 25.5); 20.4 (for pi* in Job 32.4);
22.3 (for ^ in Job 33.9); 26.[1] (for pi* in Job 35.7); 34.4 (for pi* in Job 40.8).
The first and third usages demonstrate that the range of meaning tended more
towards the sense of cleanness than in the Aramaic of the Targumim. Nonetheless,
the rendering 'be clean' in HQtgJob 34.4 in Fitzmyer and Harrington (where the
Hebrew analog is p"rc!) should be questioned; 'que tu aies raison' is preferable, cf.
J.P.M. Ploeg and A.S. van der Woude (with B. Jongling), Le Targum de Job de la
Grotte XI de Quman (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen;
Leiden: Brill, 1971). The form KfTOi is instanced, meaning 'clean' (cf. 2Q New
Jerusalem 4.[8], [14]). That is not surprising, in view of the pattern just mentioned
and contemporary usage of not in Hebrew, cf. 1QS 3.4-5; 5Q13 4.2 and M. Baillet,
J.T. Milik, R. de Vaux, Les 'Pelites Grottes' de Qumran (DJD III; Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1962).
47. M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and
Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Pardes Publishing House,
1950).