Literary Devices – Bereshit 17/0

Literary Devices – Bereshit 17

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Key Words

• ברית – Tanakh Lab demonstrates that the word “ברית” appears 13 times in this chapter, emphasizing the theme of the reciprocal covenant between Hashem and Avraham that is represented by the covenant of circumcision.¹

Character Titles

God

• Elokim – This is the name used for God throughout most of the chapter. It is the name that was used throughout the story of Creation, but has not appeared since the story of the Flood in Bereshit 9.  The usage here might recall the Creation unit, as this chapter too, is a story of creation, the creation of the Jewish people with the covenant of circumcision.²
• Hashem – The narrator refers to Hashem by His proper name, Hashem, in verse 1.
• El Shaddai – Hashem identifies Himself as “אֵל שַׁדַּי ” in 17:1.
• See the concordance and R. Yosef Ibn KaspiBereshit 17:1About R. Yosef ibn Kaspi that in almost every context in which this name for Hashem appears in Sefer Bereshit, it is associated with a Divine blessing of offspring and land.³
• Da'at Mikra further  points out that this name for Hashem is used when the protagonist of the story is in distress, and that the name connotes either God’s encouragement⁴ or attribute of judgment.⁵
• For discussion of the various possible meanings of the name "El Shaddai" and why it might be appropriate for this chapter see: R. Saadia GaonCommentary Bereshit 17:1About R. Saadia Gaon, RashiBereshit 17:1About R. Shelomo Yitzchaki, R. ChananelBereshit 17:1About R. Chananel b. Chushiel, Ibn EzraBereshit First Commentary 17:1About R. Avraham ibn Ezra, RambanBereshit 17:1About R. Moshe b. Nachman, and HaRekhasim LeVik'ahBereshit 17:1About R. Yehuda Leib Frankfurter.

Parallelism

Avraham’s response to Hashem’s promise of a son is structured parallelistically, lending it poetic structure:⁶

• הַלְּבֶן מֵאָה שָׁנָה יִוָּלֵד /  וְאִם שָׂרָה הֲבַת תִּשְׁעִים שָׁנָה תֵּלֵד

Wordplay

Examples

• "וּלְיִשְׁמָעֵאל שְׁמַעְתִּיךָ" – In verse 20, Hashem plays with the root "שמע".  Yishmael's name means "God will hear", and Hashem tells Avraham that He has indeed heard his plea, and will bless Yishmael as well.

Articles

The following articles contain general discussion of wordplay in Tanakh:

• See Wordplay in Biblical Hebrew: An Eclectic Collection, by Gary A. Rendsburg, for exploration of various forms of Biblical wordplays.
• See Wordplay in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by Scott B. Noegel, for a book-length treatment of the range of permutations of wordplays in Tanakh and in other Ancient Near Eastern texts.⁷

¹ By contrast, the word “ברית” appears only once in the story Covenant Between the Pieces in Chapter 15, as the concordance demonstrates, perhaps because that covenant contains a divine, covenantal promise but demands no action on Avraham’s part. [See the BDB definition of the word, which emphasizes the mutuality of a covenant.]

² There might be a number of other allusions to the story of Creation:

• Naming – Naming plays a central role in both stories. Avraham and Sarah receive new names in this chapter.  During creation, too, Hashem names many of the objects that He creates in Bereshit 1 and Adam later names the animals in Bereshit 2. 2.     
• Be fruitful – The promise of being fruitful and multiplying appears in this chapter and is prominent in the story of creation.
• "Finished" – The word “ויכל” (“He finished”) in verse 22 may hearken back to the same verb that appears in Bereshit 2:1 and 2:2. 

³ Interestingly, the one verse in Bereshit in which the name is not explicitly associated with this promise is 43:14, in which Yaakov agrees to send Binyamin to Egypt despite his fear of losing him and expresses his hope that Binyamin and his brother will return. Perhaps the use of this name for Hashem expresses Yaakov’s hope that all of his descendants survive.

⁴ Here, Avraham's distress over Sarah's infertility is assuaged as Hashem promises that she is to bear him children.

⁵ See the concordance that about two thirds of all the occurrences of the name are found in the book of Iyyov. [Press on "graph" to see this visually.]

⁶ For more information about the nature of Biblical parallelism, see Dr. Mayer I. Gruber’s article The Meaning of Biblical Parallelism: A Biblical Perspective and Dr. Adele Berlin’s Grammatical Aspects of Biblical Parallelism. Other resources (not available online) are Dr. Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Poetry pp. 3-61, Dr. Adele Berlin’s The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, and Dr. James Kugel’s The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History.

⁷ See How Translation Obscured the Music and Wordplay of the Bible, by Robert Alter, for an interesting account of Dr. Alter’s efforts to capture the wordplays of the Bible in translation.