The Concept of Covenant in JubileesThere seems to be no dispute amongst interpreters that h.fit in all its
occurrences in Jubilees stands for Hebrew 1TH3. A number of lines of evi
dence support this consensus. First, in the Ethiopic Pentateuch, fre
quently renders Hebrew JTHD. Second, in cases where Jubilees seems to
quote biblical texts directly, the Ethiopic most often has tuftl where the bib
lical source text has n^1 T3. Third, and most decisively, a Qumran fragment of
Jubilees in Hebrew reads TPTD where the Ethiopic reads h.fl'Jf.^20
However, another Ethiopic word, /"Cl^- (ser'at), appears several
times in Jubilees where it seems reasonable to assume that the original He
brew would have had 1THD. The difficulty here is that f"C°i-- also renders
Hebrew npn, which is made clear by the fact that 4Q216 ii 8 has THpn where
the Ethiopic (Jub 1:10) has /"CV^-P. Thus, there are grounds for uncertainty
about which word stood in the original Hebrew. As a result, scholars differ in
their approach to translating /"CI'K
Thus, Wintermute and VanderKam both render /"Clt as "covenant"
in Jub 1:5 and 23:16, and VanderKam retroverts the Ethiopic to JTHDn in his
reconstruction of 4Q216 i 14, which corresponds to Jub 1:5. This move is sup
ported by the fact that miD appears clearly on the Hebrew fragment, and
this verb commonly takes TTHn as its object in the Hebrew Bible. In contrast,
Berger renders /"Cl-t- as "Ordnung" in Jub 1:5 and 23:16, and everywhere
else it occurs in the text.
In tension with their translation of in Jub 1:5 and 23:16, but in
agreement with Berger's approach, Wintermute and VanderKam distinguish
between /"Cl-J- and K^Tr in their translations of Jub 15. Both render h.^?
with "covenant," but Wintermute renders /"CI-)- with "ordinance" and
VanderKam uses "pact," even though the Ethiopic word stands in Jubilees
where the biblical source text has 11 '"ID.
In their translation of the material added onto the biblical base text
(Jub 15:25-34), they maintain this distinction, except that in 15:26
Wintermute renders (D"(ff. • /^C'i't as "the sons of the covenant" while
VanderKam has "the people of the pact."
It is certainly the case that there are occurrences of /"CII- in Jubilees
where it is unlikely or even impossible that D'TD stood in the original He
brew. However, in a number of instances it seems appropriate to conclude
pact or agreement between people, in contrast to Genesis, where rPID several times desig
nates such an agreement (see Gen 14:13; 21:27, 32 : 26:28; 31:44).
- 4Q216 ii 8, as reconstructed by VanderKam, reads 'nlXajrlKl Tllpn [nx 131»]
['Bnj? I1S1 'mm© nxi ],n'-|3 '[737B nSl,with,nn3 in the Hebrew where the Ethiopic
has Mlt.