מאמרים מכתבי העת

The article examines the commentary of the well-known Karaite exegete
Yefet ben ʻEli (Jerusalem, tenth century) on one story in the book of Kings.
It has three main sections: the original Arabic texts of Yefet’s translation of
the story of Jehu and of his commentary on it, with a critical apparatus of
variant readings; a Hebrew translation of the Arabic texts; and an analysis of
the commentary.
The Arabic text of the translation and commentary are based on MS SP
.RNL Evr-Arab. I 3373
Lacunae in that manuscript were supplied chiefly
from MS SP IOS C 38. Variants between the latter manuscript and the copy
text, which are few and insignificant, are listed in the notes. In his Arabic
translation, Yefet remained close to the Hebrew original, as part of his
theory of translation, which he applies methodically on both the lexical and
syntactic levels.
In our back-translation of Yefet’s Arabic version we have prefaced the
Masoretic text to ours, to make it easier for readers to detect the minor
changes from the source, which reflect Yefet’s reading of the story, despite
his faithfulness to the original as noted above. We have added explanatory
comments to our Hebrew version.
The third section of this article, which is devoted to an analysis of the
commentary, begins with a brief look at Yefet’s structural perception of the
story. This is followed by extensive discussions of the historical, literary,
and exegetical aspects of his commentary on this story. The bulk of this
deals with the literary aspects, under three main headings: (1) psychological
exegesis of the characters’ motives: in the eight examples provided, Yefet
relates chiefly to how the characters (mainly Jehu) act, but also occasionally
to their words. (2) Evaluation of the characters: all of the nine examples
presented refer to his assessment of Jehu. (3) The narrative art and editorial
craft: this story exemplifies Yefet’s strong awareness of the literary facets
of the text, and especially the compositional technique employed by the
author-editor (mudawwin).
Three historical matters are considered: who controlled Ramot Gilead;
the family background of Jehonadab ben Rechab; and the presence of
loyal devotees of the Lord at rites for Baal. As for exegesis, we note the
contradictions that Yefet found in the story: within the story, between this
story and others in the book of Kings, and between the story and the book
of Chronicles.
In an afterword, we consider Yefet’s influence on Rabbanite
commentators. Building on the conjecture by Poliak and Schlossberg that
R. David Kimḥi was familiar with Yefet’s commentary and influenced by
.it, we present four verses n the Jehu story where this influence is evident