'erets,' 'ratsah,' and imaginative etymological rabbinic interpretation

From James Barr:

Why, for instance, Genesis Rabba asks with reference to Gen. 1:10, did God call the dry land ארץ ['erets]? The answer is: because [it] "conformed" (רצח [ratsah]) to his "will" (רצון [ratsohn]. Etymologizing interpretation of this kind, though found particularly in connexion with personal names, is to be found in all sorts of other connexions also [in rabbinic literature].

- James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, p.45

Sum Sekel

The title of this blog comes from one of my favorite phrases in the Bible, found in Nehemiah 8:8:

So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense [sum sekel], so that the people understood the reading.

This marvelous phrase says a mouthful, including at least two principles for this blog:

- Intepreting Scripture goes hand-in-hand with reading Scripture; reading and study should not be separated from each other.

- Translating Scripture has to be more than just an act of inserting lexical correspondences (an approach called "formal equivalance"); we look to the biblical languages to help "give the sense," not just to "give the words."