Over in American Karaite Judaism (our FB group), we recently had a contentious and bizarre discussion of the twentieth verse of Ovadia. For reference, here’s the verse:
This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan
will possess the land as far as Zar’phat;
the exiles from Jerusalem who are in S’pharad
will possess the towns of the Negev.
The individual who posted vehemently argued that, since Zar’phat and S’pharad mean France and Spain in modern Hebrew and are rendered as such in certain English translations of the TaNaKh, that this prophecy is about modern European Jews. My own position is that, since Ovadia declares from the beginning that he is delivering a prophecy concerning Edom, he cannot be talking about places or people that came into existence so long after Edom ceased to exist. Many other people commented their disagreement with the original assertion, for various reasons, but the discussion ultimately became a little too heated. While the original topic was more than a little strange, the discussion brought up a couple of worthwhile topics.
First, why are the Sephardim called Sephardim, and why is Spain called S’pharad in Hebrew? In the middle ages, the location of S’pharad, which is only mentioned in Ovadia, had been lost and was apparently a subject of debate. One group of rabbis, in a commentary on Targum Jonathan, made an educated guess that it was in the Iberian Peninsula (now Spain and Portugal), because the region is also known as Hesperia. The interpretation was popular among Spanish Jews and eventually incorporated into modern Hebrew.
Other theories about the location of S’pharad suggested that the word was an approximation of Bosphorous, Sipphara in Mesopotamia, Sardis (the capital of Lydia in modern Turkey), and even Sparta. It is known that Zar’phat was a Canaanite settlement, and that city is located in modern Lebanon and currently known as Sarepta. Sarepta is close to a place called Sarafand, which I think is suspiciously close in pronunciation to S’pharad. Zar’phat (Tsarfat, Sarfat, etc.), through commentaries and writings among European and Ottoman Jews became associated with Jews in France or, once Jews were expelled from France in 1306, Jews of French descent. The association stuck, and the word now means “France” in modern Hebrew. S’pharad and Zar’phat currently refer to Spain and France, respectively, but those are almost certainly not the intended regions in Ovadia.
On a related note, while I was on the general topic, I also looked up the origin of Ashkenazi. In modern use, Ashkenazi refers to Jews from northern and eastern Europe. The word itself comes from three scriptural references. Twice, Ashkenaz is named as one of the sons of Gomer. The third reference is in Jeremiah, when Ashkenaz is given as the name of one of the kingdoms that will participate in the Persian destruction of Babylon. As with the other place names discussed here, Ashkenaz’ location has been lost. Current scholarship notes the similarity between that name and the Akkadian name for the Scythians, so it’s possible they are the same. However, there are commentaries that proposed that Ashkenaz was located in what is now Germany, leading to the popular use of the word in reference to modern Germany and Poland and Jews originating from those countries, and from there to northern and eastern European Jews in general.
This leads to the second point: Modern and Biblical Hebrew are not the same.Translation apps are incredibly useful things in general, but a translator keyed to modern Hebrew is of limited use in studying scripture. Hebrew was a functionally dead language for a very long time (people used it for religious observance, but did not speak it conversationally), meaning that many of the words in scripture have meanings based on tradition and approximation and educated guess. Furthermore, many modern Hebrew words have been repurposed from ancient words, just as modern English words don’t mean the same things they did 500 or 1000 years ago.
An excellent example in Hebrew can be found in the descriptions of the materials used in building the Mishkan in Shemot and Bamidbar. The KJV frequently includes “badger skin” as one of the materials. The English translation found at the Mechon-Mamre website consistently says “sealskin” instead. More modern Christian translations simply say “ram skin”. But if you plug those passages into Google Translate, they variously say buckthorn or ash skin (both tree bark), buckskins, donkey skin, tanned hides, or even dachshund! Ezekiel 16:10 also references badger in the KJV and sealskin in Mechon-Mamre, but Google Translate says “silk,” and the ESV simply says “fine leather.” I think a particular type of ram or buck skin are the most likely meanings, but these are words where the original meaning is uncertain, and different translators have made various guesses over the years, but the modern Hebrew has a distinctly different meaning. Using Google Translate or other translation apps might be interesting, but it isn’t useful in cases such as these.
Whatever the actual locations of these biblical places, we cannot assume that modern uses of these words are the intended scriptural uses. To do so is akin to saying that India is actually in the Americas because Native Americans were long referred to as Indian, or that the Maori live in the Netherlands, because Zeeland is a region there.
Silver Trumpets 