פירושים לספר משלי לית קמחי: ריקײם, רמײק, רדײק [The Commentaries on Proverbs of the Kimhi Family] (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 167 Reviews 27, the meals prepared by Esau and Jacob are symbolic sacrifices that avert the violence between father and sons. In the Joseph story the brothers dip Joseph's cloak in goat's blood "to save themselves from their father's wrath, but they are too late to save Joseph from their own" (p. 44). Presumably if the brothers had killed the goat earlier in the story, Joseph would have been protected from their violence. Somehow the story of Judah and Tamar resolves the generational and sibling violence in Genesis, since "Tamar ensures that paternal violence never enters her family at all" (p. 47). The reason for the lack of paternal violence in the case of Tamar's sons, however, is that the (legal) father is dead. How this solves the problem of the violence of Jacob's sons is left unclear, but somehow "through Judah this family becomes the model for the entire house of Jacob" (p. 49). There are a number of dubious inferences and literary interpretations in this book. Steinmetz claims that "circumcision [in Gen 17] and the thighwound [in Gen 32] ... symbolize the ambivalent nature of paternity" (p. 132), since she believes that Abraham's and Jacob's virility (!) are impaired by these acts. Examples such as this abound. There are also some problems in Steinmetz's understanding of biblical Hebrew: m~$abeq in Gen 12:9 and 26:8 does not mean "laugh" (as it does in modem Hebrew), hence the analyses of Ishmael's and Isaac's characters based on these verses are mistaken (pp. 79, 88, 90, etc.). Nor is Potiphar's office that of "Chief Slaughterer" (p. 116; tabbabfm, "guards," occurs thirty-one times in biblical Hebrew), no matter how appealing the symbolism might be. In its cavalier treatment of psychoanalytical/literary theory and the biblical text, this book falls short as a compelling "literary current in biblical interpretation." Ronald S. Hendel Southern Methodist University Dallas. TX 75275 .p"i ,p"Oi ,C"P'i :"MOP n':l" ,~o i~" c'rZ"i'£) [THE COMMENTARIES ON PROVERBS OF THE KIMlJI FAMILY]. By Frank Talmage. pp. :J~ + 472. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990. Cloth. Frank Talmage died, tragically, in 1988 after years of a debilitating disease which, nevertheless, did not prevent him from having a prolific Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 168 Reviews scholarly career. This fact makes it all the more difficult to review this, his last labor, for although his editor (the distinguished Joseph Hacker of Hebrew University) states that Talmage was able to see page proofs of the work before his death, no doubt some of the errors and faults of the work could have been corrected had time and health allowed. From the outset it should be stated that this is, of course, an important contribution to medieval biblical scholarship, as is any careful and accurate edition of such commentaries. Recently we have been fortunate to have, for example, the edition and excellent Spanish translation of the autograph MS of Isaac Abravanel's commentary on Amos (see my review in JBL 105 [1986]: 530-531); and the first volume of a more-or-Iess critical edition (Shney peirushey Abraham Ibn CEzra le-Trey-CAsar, Uriel Simon, ed. [Ramat, 1989], vol. 1: Hosea, Joel, Amos) of Ibn (Ezra's commentary on the so-called "Minor" Prophets-would that scholars might use the Hebrew designation of "Twelve" instead of the outrageously inaccurate "Minor"! The QimJ:ti family, Joseph and his sons Moses and David, all of whom were born in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) but lived in Narbonne in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, were renowned as grammarians (Joseph and David) and as biblical commentators (particularly David) as well as authors of other works. For this reason alone, it is important to have a critical edition of the commentaries of all three on Proverbs. Talmage has done an excellent job of editing the texts, utilizing correct criteria of selection of variants for inclusion (unlike many so-called "critical editions" which actually utilize only one or two MSS) and has provided thorough notes in most cases, with references to other related sources. The introduction to the book, however, has...