'La main du seigneur sera contre vous et contre vos pères' (1 Samuel 12:15)

The article is one of the last works of research completed by Dr. Raphael Weiss, a young scholar whose contributions encompass studies on the Biblical text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Qumran Scrolls, and the Aramaic Targum. He passed away on October 26, 1974 at the age of 34. The difficulty of the verse is well-known. Samuel apparently extends his threatened punishment to include 'your fathers', who, however, are no longer among the living. The author, after rejecting the standard explanations based on the Aramaic and Septuagintal translations, offers an interpretation based on a minor textual emendation: the elimination of the letter aleph from the word uba'abotēhem ('against your fathers'), thus reading ubebatēhem ('against your households'). This is supported by several other instances in which disaster strikes not only the guilty parties but also includes their households (Num 16:32; Deut 11:6; cf. too, the story of the Ten Plagues, Exod 8:5,7,17). The aleph in the word was added by a later copyist who was influenced by the stereotypic expression 'you and your fathers' (e.g., Jer 16:13; 44:3) [abstract by Meir Weiss].