10 He replied, “You I heard, in the garden …
וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אֶת־קֹלְךָ֥ שָׁמַ֖עְתִּי בַּגָּ֑ן
Is this Adam or Yoda? The King James translates here, “I heard thy voice in the garden,” but the phrase begins, unusually, with the direct object marker. Biblical Hebrew storytelling, as we’ve said, is normally a verb-subject-object language (va-yomer elohim ‘and said God’ rather than “God said” as in English, an S-V-O language). In almost any language, if the object comes first something unusual is going on.
I did not translate qol here because I wanted to match my translation of v. 8, where I simply said “They heard YHWH God walking around in the garden.” (Go there to see why.) Our verse, I believe, still leaves open whether they actually heard “the voice” of God or “the sound” of God. What’s important is that the expression here, like that one, combines the verb שׁמע and the noun קול. Thanks to my Bible search program, a quick scroll through the Torah finds more than five dozen examples where someone “hears” a qol, as the human does in this verse, maybe 30% of all the occurrences in the Bible. Only four others put the object קול before the verb שׁמע, and all of those are trying to present some sort of contrast or emphasis.
Joshua speaking to Moses in Exod 32:18 is a good example. He is hearing the sound of the Israelites celebrating around the Golden Calf. The language is somewhat unclear (we’ll save a full translation until we get there, which should be some time before the end of the century), but all you have to do is look at the words in bold to see that first, in v. 17, Joshua hears a sound, in normal grammatical order. Then he reports to Moses that there is a sound — not a sound of victory, not a sound of defeat; “it is a sound that I hear.” This is emphasis that explains the switch from the normal order.
17
וַיִּשְׁמַ֧ע יְהוֹשֻׁ֛עַ אֶת־ק֥וֹל הָעָ֖ם בְּרֵעֹ֑ה
וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה ק֥וֹל מִלְחָמָ֖ה בַּֽמַּחֲנֶה׃
18
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר אֵ֥ין קוֹל֙ עֲנ֣וֹת גְּבוּרָ֔ה
וְאֵ֥ין ק֖וֹל עֲנ֣וֹת חֲלוּשָׁ֑ה
ק֣וֹל עַנּ֔וֹת אָנֹכִ֖י שֹׁמֵֽעַ׃
See Deut 4:12, 5:24 [21 in some Bibles], and 13:5 for the other examples, all of which can be explained as expressed contrast or in some other rhetorical way. But why are they reversed here in Genesis? He is not saying, “Oh, so that was you I heard.”
Nahum Sarna writes:
The man’s evasive words contain a hint of irony, for in Hebrew the words “I heard the sound of You” can also be translated “I obeyed You,” which, of course, is the opposite of the truth.
That is not quite correct, but it might be the clue to the backwards syntax of this phrase. The mere fact that they hid themselves makes clear that they are not comfortable with YHWH’s sudden presence (though it does not make clear why they’re uncomfortable). When people are knocked off balance, that can interfere with the way they speak — and this phenomenon is reflected elsewhere in biblical literature.
Let’s move the camera out for just a moment to get a slightly wider angle on what’s going on.
V. 8 told us that the adam and his isha hid themselves. In v. 9, YHWH God calls the adam and says to him, “Where are you?” (using a masculine singular form; the spotlight that was on the woman at the beginning of this chapter has shifted).
There are two reasonable ways to respond when someone you are hiding from asks “Where are you?”
“Ha ha, I’m over here, you never would have found me.”
Say nothing and hope whoever it is doesn’t find you. Isn’t that why you are hiding?
Once again we are confronted with a story element that’s quite unrealistic if you give it any thought. The purpose is not to paint a realistic picture, and certainly not to report a news story, but to impart a certain flavor as things move along to their pre-ordained conclusion. The writer wanted this character to hide — the character will explain why in a moment — but was not interested in making that a plot element. The hiding is over at once, without any description of how it ended.
As we saw last time, the commentators love to point out that “of course” God knew perfectly well where they were hiding. The point of the question was to start a conversation, to encourage the earthling to fess up. That could conceivably explain why we don’t see him/them coming out of concealment. But the God of the Bible is not (always) omniscient. I think our writer is retelling a myth and not trying to create a realistic story.
… and I was afraid, because I was nude …
וָאִירָ֛א כִּֽי־עֵירֹ֥ם אָנֹ֖כִי
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