I'm pretty knotted up from trying to suss out what's going on in the Hebrew text of this verse. This is the NASB95…
My focus is on the term "choice men". NASB has a note attached…see below:
The NASB says that the Masoretic Text has the word for "fugitives", but they have preferred "choice men" in the presented text.
The NET Bible note for this says…
This note is helpful but lacks critical specificity. The explanation regarding the metathesis helps, but we aren't told WHICH manuscripts have which option—we must accept the NASB's assertion that the MT uses "fugitives".
In order to keep this all straight, let's determine which Hebrew word provides each meaning. Below are the lexical bases per DBLH (I'm only including enough to establish the fact for each)…
Okay…so baahhar means "choice" or "chosen", and baarahh means "fleeing" or "fugitive". Keep in mind, NASB said the MT has baarahh (the 2nd, or #1368).
Let's see what LHI has to contribute…
There's a lot here. First, we need to address LHI and it's front matter…or the lack thereof. I have always assumed that the base text of LHI was the MT, even though there is NOTHING in the document that addresses what its base text is. Could it be merely the idiosyncratic choices of van der Merwe? Who knows? For the rest of this post, until I am told otherwise, I am going to sustain my assumption that MT is what we are presented in LHI. There is a reason why I assume this, and it has to do with the yellow and blue boxes above. In the Hebrew scrolls used in synagogues, there are marginalia that indicate rabbinic preferences for how to read the text aloud in public. The terms as they are usually written are qere and ketib (or…per Wikipedia…)
I'm going to stick with the spelling from the blue box above (ketib), although I find all of these options sorely deficient…but that's a different post. Cutting to the chase, the rabbis of long-ago yesteryear made a decision that certain words and phrases in the Bible were troublesome, annoying, untrustworthy, or ______ enough that changes and adjustments needed to be made, and they were just the people to make that happen. Without making actual changes to the WRITTEN text itself (i.e. the KETIB), they marked in the margins of all Hebrew TaNaKh scrolls what they required readers to "call out" or READ ALOUD (i.e. the QERE) at various spots during Sabbath Scripture readings in the synagogue. This marginalia is marked with a qohpph (or qof), which is the Hebrew letter equivalent of a Q-sound (for qere, obviously), which is the ק symbol in the two yellow boxes of the LHI pic above.
It is the presence in LHI of the qere (qohpph) symbol that influences me to believe that the MT is the presented mainline text. The MT is the traditional, rabbinically-approved Hebrew text for synagogue scroll use, and the presence of ק readings in LHI insinuates the MT text. Lets look at the excised section included in the LHI pic above in a more complete presentation.
In a hardcopy scroll, the blue ק would be in the margin above the Hebrew combo-word translated "all of his choice troops", and printed beside it would be the rabbinically-preferred word. As these are digital and not tangible texts, clicking on the blue ק produces a popup that shows the qere word, which is shown as a footnote (see the yellow box ק above the green and blue boxes).
It is here where the consternation really kicks in. BOTH the ketib word AND the qere word are based on the word baarahh (#1368) which means "fleeing/fugitive". The only difference between the two is the suffixed portion of each (see the orange box of the ketib word and compare with the footnoted qere word). In other words, as presented, the difference of the ketib compared to the qere DOES NOT EXPLAIN AT ALL the alternate choice of baahhar (#1047 "choice troops"). Even more questionable and bizarre…notice the green square just above that's highlighting the "a" footnote—it corresponds to the footnote in the first (big) LHI pic above that has the green and blue boxes, and reads: "Read the ketib, 'choice troops'." BUT AS I JUST EXPLAINED, THE KETIB THAT IS PRESENTED IN THE LHI TEXT (the word with the orange box) IS BASED ON BAARAHH ("fleeing/fugitive") AND NOT ON BAHHAAR ("choice troops")!!!!
This is a major mistake. As presented in the LHI, NOTHING explains the presence of "choice troops" as a translation option, and, as a result, the footnote statement that "choice troops" is the ketib reading IS PLAINLY AND STARKLY FALSE.
The footnote that claims the ketib reading is "choice troops" also mentions a footnote in BHS, which I condense below…
What BHS presents is essentially an inversion of the typical "qere notation of a ketib revision". By transposition, BHS simply inserts the qere reading INTO THE PRESENTATION TEXT, and then marks the notation (usually being a Hebrew Q for qere) with a K for ketib. Being nothing more than a transposition, the BHS also FAILS TO PROVIDE ANY EVIDENTIAL SUPPORT for the baahhar "choice troops" reading.
This marks yet another error in LHI that I have drawn attention to in the last month or so. I will repeat…the LHI is the only true Hebrew interlinear in Logos. It bears the Lexham name in the title, which is a FL imprint. This resource needs to be given a serious and significant review. Because I've copied so many fragments from LHI into my notes in years past, I can see both how many and how significant the changes are to this resource in recent years—I'm increasingly not sure it was for the better. FL can get away (to some degree) with having a typo-riddled resource like TWOT in its stable, even though it is a critical reference resource, because it was published elsewhere. Not so with LHI. Failing to address these kinds of errors can tar and sully FL's reputation as both a publisher and a credible research & study platform.
I'm still curious where "choice troops" comes from. If anyone has insight to share, please do. I will say, from a prophetic functionality perspective, both roots…
Beiytth / Reiysh / Hheiytth [B-R-Hh] ("fleeing/fugitive") & Beiytth / Hheiytth / Reiysh [B-Hh-R] ("chosen/choice troops")
…can and actually do get used to describe the parties that are being addressed here in this verse/passage. The choice troops are made to flee for safety. Spoiler Alert!!
They do not find it. I can't help but think that YHWH uses these textual "whichizit?" phenomena as a way to shoehorn multiple condensed semantic and prophetic possibilities into the Book. He's nothing if not efficient in that respect. These things occur all over the place. The factorial intertextual relationship possibilities of the Bible put a deck of cards to shame.
