The Commentators' Bible. The JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot. Shemot Exodus

Currents in Theology and Mission, June, 2007 by Ralph W. Klein

The Commentators' Bible. The JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot. Shemot Exodus. Edited by Michael Carask (Jewish Publication Society, $75). This is a "large format Bible," containing on every page a short Hebrew text from Exodus, two twentieth-century Jewish English translations, and the medieval commentaries of Rashi (1040-1105), Rashbam (1085-1174, Rashi's grandson), Ibn Ezra (1089-1164), and Nahmanides (1195-1270), all in English.

(Other medieval commentators are included now and then). Reading these multiple commentaries together on one page engages the reader in the conversation/debate going on among these great commentators, whose questions are often not the same as ours. Rashi, for example, concluded that Moses killed the Egyptian by pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, but Ibn Ezra was sure it was with a stone or a spear. Since Moses loaded his family on the ass (Exod 4:20, the definite article is in the Hebrew), Rashi concluded that it was the same ass Abraham had used at the time of the (near) sacrifice of Isaac and that the Messiah would use at the end of days (Zech 9:9). Beautifully printed. RWK