Here's the second (סוף מעשה, במחשבה תחילה) of the two extended passages I wanted to translate from Rabbi Dr Ludwig Philippson's 1844 commentary on the Torah to demonstrate his skill at finding patterns and meaning in what looks like an arbitrary sequence of events in the text.

Like the first, it's a long text; I suggest you print it out and read it at your leisure—though do note that if you do, since it contains Divine names, it needs to be disposed of afterwards in a geniza.

Readers for whom the entire text is nevertheless too long may gain the thrust of Philippson's argument by restricting themselves to reading the sections I have set in bold.

As in the other text I translated, there are a few terms I would like to draw attention to the difficulty of translating before we launch in.

• German, like Hebrew (אדם‎/איש) and Latin (homo/vir) has a strong distinction between Mensch, meaning man as opposed to the animals and Mann meaning man as opposed to woman. Although English has "human" for the former, the term "humankind" feels way too modern (Google Ngrams reveals that though the word is old, it didn't really take off until 1970), so I have chosen to use "Man"/"Mankind" in my translation, which, whilst it gives the term a gender bias that isn't present in the original, gives the translation a not inappropriate IMNSHO nineteenth-century feel.
• Philippson often uses the terms Erkenntniß and Recht here for the values God wished to foster in humanity. The former can mean knowledge or awareness, the latter law or justice; and I am not confident that I have picked the correct translation of each pair in all cases. On occasion I have weaselled out and given both.
• Lastly, Philippson uses here the term Bestimmung a lot, which is a noun derived from the verb meaning to determine, assign or ordain. I have mostly translated it "destiny", but in the sense what the Israelites have been designated, determined or ordained for, not the kind of destiny that the unknown future holds, for which there are other words in German (Schicksal or Fügung).

Chapter 37

On the day that Isaac the father of Jacob and Esau died, the sons of Esau heard that Isaac had given the portion of the elder to his younger son Jacob and they were very angry. They strove with their father, saying 'Why has your father given Jacob the portion of the elder and passed over you, though you are the elder and Jacob the younger?'

"We won't listen to you to make peace with him! Our strength is greater than his strength, and we are more powerful than him; we will go against him and slay him, and destroy him and his sons. And if you won't go along with us, we shall do hurt to you too!"

They come up with a plan of hiring Aramean, Philistine, Moabite and Ammonite mercenaries; when Esau tells them not to lest they be slain, they say "Well, this is just typical of you!" (as the modern translation puts it).

Jubilees posts                     Jewish learning notes index