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Programming note: October is Jewish Holiday Month this year, and Thursdays are festival days. Out of consideration for my Jewish readers (and myself!) there won’t be any Thursday posts in the month of October, to slow down the pace a bit and give newer readers a chance to catch up on earlier posts.
11 The Earth filled up with malice. וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס׃
Our verse began with a Niphal verb telling us that the Earth went to ruin, and it continues with another, וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א va-timmalé ‘it filled up’. If grammar bores you and you are ready for something a little better suited for the big screen, you will have to skip down past Num 23:2 and its bullet points. Part of what I want to do in this Substack is remind people that if you’re reading in English, you are reading a translation, not the Bible itself. In our verse, I need to discuss two aspects of the Hebrew to make clear what v. 11 is trying to say.
Now, for you loyal, non-skipping readers, a quick refresher about why I’ve translated these two verbs the way I have. I was taught many years ago that the Niphal is the passive of the Qal. One “kills” in the Qal; one “is killed” in the Niphal. In Biblical Hebrew, though, Niphal can be much more like what’s called a “middle,” a term that I believe comes from the grammar of ancient Greek. ⇥ See Lesson 15 of my Hebrew course for much more on the binyanim. ⇤
As I explained when the first two humans’ eyes opened, the middle is a verb that sounds active but is really passive or reflexive. When a door “opens” it is not opening a can of beer; what’s really happening is that someone has caused it to open — we don’t know (or care) who. The person who caused it to open is invisible in the sentence. That is exactly what is happening, twice, here in v. 11, when the Earth “went to ruin” (וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת) and then “filled up” (וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א).
Next, there’s one more point to make about this va-yiqtol verb form, the “converted imperfect” a/k/a “imperfect consecutive.” Normally it tells you that the action is advancing. Our verse, however, may be a case where the first va-yiqtol describes what happens next in general terms and the second starts the action. Jouön-Muraoka 118ia calls the first one a “summarising wayyiqtol.” Here’s the verse they offer to explain it (from the KJV):
Num 23:2 And Balak did [וַיַּ֣עַשׂ בָּלָ֔ק] as Balaam had spoken [דִּבֶּ֣ר בִּלְעָ֑ם]; and Balak and Balaam offered [וַיַּ֨עַל בָּלָ֧ק וּבִלְעָ֛ם] on every altar a bullock and a ram.
Here’s how I understand this sequence of verbs:
In v. 1, Balaam told Balak to prepare sacrifices.
וַיַּ֣עַשׂ בָּלָ֔ק va-ya’as balak — Next, Balak did [imperfect consecutive] …
כַּאֲשֶׁ֖ר דִּבֶּ֣ר בִּלְעָ֑ם ka’asher dibber bil’am — as Balaam had said [using a perfect verb to break the sequence].
וַיַּ֨עַל בָּלָ֧ק וּבִלְעָ֛ם va-ya’al balak u-vil’am — What exactly did he do? He (and Balaam) offered [another imperfect consecutive] a bull and a ram on each altar.
When Balak offered sacrifice, the imperfect consecutive va-ya’al is what Balaam had told him to do, and the story will continue in sequence from there. It is as if the first imperfect consecutive functions as a sort of headline. In our story too, “the earth went to ruin [וַתִּשָּׁחֵ֥ת],” its ruination caused by a party or parties unknown (as the grammar in the two preceding paragraphs explains). How so? How did it go to ruin? “The Earth filled up [וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א] with ḥamas.” Now read on.
What the Earth filled up with sounds, and in English is spelled, regrettably like the name of the terrorist group that perpetrated the October 7th massacre. That name, spelled in Hebrew with an א before the ס, is really an Arabic acronym said to stand for “Islamic Resistance Movement” and has no connection with the word in our verse. (The Arabic word with this sound has a different meaning entirely.) Here’s how the Hebrew word has been translated:
KJV: violence (also NRSV)
NJPS: lawlessness
Fox: wrongdoing
Alter: outrage
It appears together with שׁחת only here and in v. 13. You can see that those English translations all fall into the same general area of the ball park, but there is quite a difference between them if you clean your glasses. Let’s see whether we can pin it down a bit more precisely. Here’s a summary of the extrabiblical evidence from TDOT:
The root ḥms is scarcely attested outside Israel. The Zenjirli inscription contains an instance of ḥms in the singular absolute; the inscription, which dates from the mid-eighth century B.C., is fragmentary, and KAI supplies the missing context: “[Whoever] lays hand to sword and [commits] violence.” It is certain that ḥms is here associated with murder.
If I understand the context of that inscription correctly, חמס is certainly associated with murder. What does the word mean, though? There is no murder involved when Sarai flings the word at Abram:
Gen. 16:5 And Sarai said to Abram, “The wrong done me [חֲמָסִ֣י] is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem. The LORD decide between you and me!” [NJPS]
Speiser invokes Sarai’s use of the word to state:
Heb. ḥāmās is a technical legal term which should not be automatically reproduced as “violence.”
Sarna in his turn writes:
This term parallels “no justice” in Job 19:7 and is elsewhere the synonym of “falsehood,” “deceit,” or “bloodshed.” It means, in general, the flagrant subversion of the ordered processes of law.
He adds that “the divine enactments for the regulation of society after the Flood” let us deduce what was going on. I deduce …
from 9:3, that people were eating meat; and
from 9:6, that people were killing each other.
We haven’t actually seen any of that happening in our story except for Cain’s killing Abel, which happened 9 generations ago. For all these reasons, therefore, I’ve chosen the English word malice to represent חמס. It indicates an intensely negative atmosphere without assuming or precluding the actions that might accompany such an atmosphere.
For those who prefer to understand ḥamas the King James way as “violence,” let me offer support (in a roundabout way) via two foreign languages. The LXX translates חמס as ᾰ̓δῐκία adikia ‘injustice’. That’s a- meaning not, a prefix that we have in English too, with words like amoral or apolitical — and also in a word borrowed into English from Sanskrit, per the OED:
ahimsa
The doctrine of non-violence; avoidance of killing or causing harm out of respect for all living things.
Origin: A borrowing from Sanskrit.
Etymon: Sanskrit ahiṃsā.
Etymology: < Sanskrit ahiṃsā, ahiṉsā non-violence < a- un- prefix1 + hiṃsā injury ( < hiṃs- to injure, harm, kill). – Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. The doctrine of non-violence; avoidance of killing or causing harm out of respect for all living things.
Could this “non-violence” be a- + the equivalent of ḥamas? I asked a Penn colleague with a vast knowledge of the languages of Asia, Victor Mair, who analyzed the question on Language Log. His conclusion:
Though Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and Hebrew is Semitic, my initial impression is that the connection is not entirely implausible.
The commenters were less than happy with this conclusion, but I’m sticking with it. Next time, our story will start to move inevitably forward toward the Flood.
Please continue to offer the grammar when appropriate. It ties in well with what I learn in your Great Courses course and I really appreciate it.