Changing Divine Speech
When Tradition Trumps the Text, even when God Speaks
The early transmission of biblical texts into new languages and cultures reveals a fascinating struggle between preservation and adaptation to evolving theological perspectives. Particularly noteworthy is how later traditions, including the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, the New Testament, among others, modify divine speech in scripture. What might seem sacrosanct and untouchable - the direct spoken words of God - proves just as adaptable in its reception, reflecting changing theological concerns. This willingness to alter divine speech can be jarring in light of modern assumptions about how the text was originally read and preserved.
These modifications to the text go beyond difficult translation choices or selecting among textual variants. When examining these moments of alteration, distinct patterns emerge. Translators and interpreters often deliberately adjusted divine speech for a variety of reasons: to avoid anthropomorphism, clarify theological ambiguities, or realign the text with contemporary practices. The phenomenon also appears across diverse text families and time periods, suggesting a more widespread approach rather than isolated incidents. In prophetic literature, historical narratives, and legal texts alike, divine utterances undergo alterations ranging from subtle adjustments to substantial additions and modifications. While modern readers might expect ancient scribes and translators to have prioritized word-for-word accuracy above all else, especially for divine speech, the evidence shows a more malleable approach.
Understanding this mindset helps shed light on how these readers tried to maintain the relevance of the text while allowing them to evolve to address new questions and concerns. Modern assumptions about how biblical texts should be treated often reflect relatively recent developments in readership and theological approaches, rather than what we can see in the actual practices of their earliest interpreters and translators.
So the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to speak everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh that he must release the Israelites from his land. (Exodus 7:1-2)
But the Lord said to Moses, See, I have appointed you a Teacher to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be your interpreter. You shall speak all that I have commanded you, and Aaron your brother shall speak with Pharaoh to send away the sons of Israel from his land. (Targum Onkelos Exodus 7:1-2)1
In the Hebrew text of Exodus 7:1-2, God tells Moses, “I have made you like God [Elohim] to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.” This statement potentially creates theological discomfort - is God elevating Moses to divine status? The Targum Onkelos, an early and much more literal Aramaic translation, addresses this concern by altering God’s words: “I have appointed you a Teacher to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be your interpreter.”
The Targum’s alteration serves multiple functions beyond mere clarification. By changing “God” to “Teacher,” the translator eliminates any hint that Moses was being deified or given divine status. Similarly, transforming “prophet” into “interpreter” emphasizes Aaron’s practical role in the narrative and removing any implication that he was a divine mediator. These changes were not made because the translator misunderstood the Hebrew terms - “elohim” is primarily a generic word for “God” and “navi” means “prophet” in standard usage.2 For the Targum’s translator, this end result reflects both a theological emphasis to avoid deifying Moses and also reflects how in the early Rabbinic period that produced the Targum, the roles of Teacher and Interpreter had become elevated.
The Lord said to Moses, “Go up from here, you and the people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. (Exodus 33:1-2)
And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, go on up from here, you and your people whom you have led out of the land of Egypt into the land that I swore to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your seed.’” And I will send my angel along before your face and he will drive out the Amorite and Hittite and Perizzite and Girgashite and Hivite and Jebusite. (LXX Exodus 33:1-2)3
In the Hebrew text of Exodus 33:1-2, God declares, “I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanite...” Here, God claims personal responsibility for both sending the angel and directly driving out the nations. The Septuagint, however, transforms this statement to read: “I will send my angel along before your face and he will drive out...” This change shifts the action of expulsion from God to the angel while maintaining God as the speaker throughout.
The Septuagint modification reflects theological discomfort with attributing direct involvement in conquest to God. By reassigning the action of driving out nations from God to the angel, the translators create distance between the divine and potentially troubling acts of displacement. God remains the speaker in both versions, but the Septuagint alters what God claims to do versus what God delegates to another.4 In this specific case, the Septuagint translators felt the liberty to change the content of God’s proclamation, while targum Onkelos maintains the original formulation.
Gideon said to him, “But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family.” The Lord said to him, “Ah, but I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army.” (Judges 6:15-16)
And Gideon said to him, “In me, my Lord, by what shall I save Israel? Look, my thousand is weak in Manasseh, and I am the insignificant one in the house of my father.” So the angel of the Lord said to him, “The Lord shall be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites like one man.” (LXX Judges 6:15-16)5
Judges 6:15-16 presents a dramatic example for two reasons, involving the changing of divine speech along with its reattribution. In the Hebrew text, after Gideon expresses doubt about his abilities, “The Lord said to him, ‘Ah, but I will be with you! You will strike down the whole Midianite army.’” The Septuagint radically transforms this passage: “So the angel of the Lord said to him, ‘The Lord shall be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites like one man.’” This alteration shifts the speaker from God directly to an angelic intermediary, while simultaneously changing what is said from first-person divine presence (“I will be with you”) to third-person divine assistance (“The Lord shall be with you”).
This modification reflects a broader pattern in the Septuagint version of Judges, where translators consistently insert angelic mediation between God and humans. Throughout the narrative of Gideon, the Septuagint carefully distinguishes between God and the angel of the Lord, even when the Hebrew text blurs this distinction. This particular transformation reveals a theological commitment to maintaining divine transcendence - God remains separate from direct interaction with humans, working instead through angelic representatives.6 The translators weren’t simply making linguistic adjustments but were attempting to implement a coherent theological vision that reshaped the nature of divine-human interaction throughout the text.
The changes in Judges exemplify how ancient interpreters could fundamentally reconceive divine communication. By reassigning speech from God to an angel, the Septuagint translators didn’t merely alter words; they reconstructed the entire theological framework of the narrative. This wasn’t a matter of casual editorial freedom but reflected deep theological concerns about maintaining proper boundaries between the divine and human realms. For these translators, preserving appropriate concepts of divine transcendence took precedence over maintaining the literal attribution or wording of divine speech. This approach reveals an understanding of scripture where theological principles guided translation decisions, even when those decisions required significant intervention in the representation of divine communication.
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies told me this: “Many houses will certainly become desolate, large, impressive houses will have no one living in them. Indeed, a large vineyard will produce just a few gallons, and enough seed to yield several bushels will produce less than a bushel.” (Isaiah 5:9-11)
The prophet said, With my ears I have heard when this was decreed by the Lord of hosts, of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even the great and the fair, without inhabitant. Because of the sin of not giving tithes, the place of ten acres of vineyard shall produce one bath; and the place where a cor of seed was sown shall produce three measures. (Targum Jonathan Isaiah 5:9-11)7
In the Targum Jonathan version of Isaiah 5:9-11, the transformation of the original text goes beyond mere alteration to include wholesale invention. The Hebrew text records God’s pronouncement that “Many houses will certainly become desolate, large, impressive houses will have no one living in them. Indeed, a large vineyard will produce just a few gallons...” The Targum dramatically expands this by inserting an entirely new explanatory clause with no underlying Hebrew support: “Because of the sin of not giving tithes, the place of ten acres of vineyard shall produce one bath...” This inserted cause-and-effect relationship fundamentally changes the nature of the divine pronouncement.
The Targum’s interpolation represents a remarkable level of interpretive freedom. Unlike modifications that merely adjust existing content, this addition creates new divine speech where it did not before, specifically identifying failure to pay tithes as the sin that triggers divine punishment. This insertion transforms a general proclamation of judgment into a specific moral lesson about religious obligations. The translator doesn’t merely interpret the text but actively creates theological content, putting words in God’s mouth that serve contemporary, later concerns about proper observance in the time when the synagogue was the center of life and practice.8
The Targum’s author clearly felt empowered not just to clarify or adjust divine pronouncements but to augment them with completely new content that advanced their specific needs. Such freedom would be considered shocking in modern translation practices. The willingness to insert completely new explanatory clauses into divine speech reveals a fundamentally different understanding of textual faithfulness and again where tradition trumps it.
But look, the Lord’s message came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but instead a son who comes from your own body will be your heir.” The Lord took him outside and said, “Gaze into the sky and count the stars—if you are able to count them!” Then he said to him, “So will your descendants be.” (Genesis 15:4-5)
Brothers and sisters, I offer an example from everyday life: When a covenant has been ratified, even though it is only a human contract, no one can set it aside or add anything to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to the descendants,” referring to many, but “and to your descendant,” referring to one, who is Christ. (Galatians 3:15-16)9
Paul’s use of the Genesis text in Galatians 3:15-16 represents a notable but subtle recasting of divine speech in Christian literature. While not obviously changing any words in the original text, Paul performs an interesting and unusual reading of Genesis 15:5, where God promises Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars. Paul’s argument hinges on a grammatical technicality - he insists that because the word for “seed” is singular rather than plural, God must have been referring to a single descendant of Jesus rather than multiple descendants. This despite the fact that the promise explicitly refers to innumerable offspring and that “seed” functions as a collective noun in both Greek and Hebrew, so it is still technically plural. This plurality can indeed be seen in most modern English translations of Genesis 15.
What makes Paul’s usage here notable is its seemingly innocent presentation as a straightforward grammatical observation. Unlike the Targums or Septuagint translators who overtly modified texts, Paul presents this altered reading as simply uncovering what was always there. Yet his interpretive move fundamentally transforms divine speech by insisting that God’s promise about countless descendants actually referred to a single individual. Paul strategically avoids quoting this contextual detail while focusing solely on the grammatical form of “seed,” effectively reversing the intended meaning of the statement.10
This method might seem more faithful, at first glance, with modern expectations, but it’s no less radical in its impact in how Paul forces a singular reading onto a collectively plural noun. As a reader who elsewhere shows knowledge of both Hebrew and Greek text traditions, Paul almost certainly knew what he was doing and how the language of the text actually functioned, yet still chose to force this reading on it. This demonstrates that early Christian interpreters, like their Jewish counterparts, also felt empowered to reframe the text and find ways to read and harmonize it with contemporary tradition.
“At that time, I will willingly respond,” declares the Lord. “I will respond to the sky, and the sky will respond to the ground; then the ground will respond to the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil; and they will respond to ‘God Plants’ (Jezreel)! Then I will plant her as my own in the land. I will have pity on ‘No Pity’ (Lo-Ruhamah). I will say to ‘Not My People’ (Lo-Ammi), ‘You are my people!’ And he will say, ‘You are my God!’” (Hosea 2:21-23)
And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory — even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he also says in Hosea: “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and I will call her who was unloved, ‘My beloved.’” (Romans 9:23-25)11
Paul’s treatment of Hosea 2:23 in Romans 9:25 is another example of recontextualization of divine speech to serve contemporary tradition. In the original Hosea passage, God declares, “I will say to ‘Not My People’, ‘You are my people!’” This divine pronouncement specifically addresses the restoration of covenant relationship with the northern kingdom of Israel, whom God had temporarily rejected. The passage uses the symbolic names of Hosea’s children to represent the northern kingdom of Israel’s journey from rejection to restoration. When Paul quotes this divine speech in Romans, he both paraphrases the text and radically shifts its referent: “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and I will call her who was unloved, ‘My beloved.’” For Paul, this divine statement now refers to the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s covenant community.
This reappropriation involves several significant transformations of the original divine speech. This begins with the introduction of the word “call” into the passage12, but more fundamentally, it inverts the “plain” reading by applying to Gentiles what was explicitly addressed to the northern kingdom of Israel. In Hosea, those who were “not my people” were those who had broken covenant but would be restored; in Paul’s usage, they become Gentiles who were never in covenant but are now being included. This interpretive move is even more striking given that the book of Hosea revolves around the metaphor of Israel as God’s unfaithful covenant partner who will ultimately be restored - a narrative structure that, given its original historical context, makes little sense when applied to Gentiles.
Still, rather than treating God’s words as fixed declarations limited to their original context, Paul views them as malleable language and ideas that can be reapplied to new situations. This approach appears to reflect a conviction that divine speech can be shifted and transformed so that it transcends its initial context. For Paul, the fundamental principle in Hosea - God’s mercy toward those outside covenant relationship - supersedes the specific historical referent. This again demonstrates how early Christian handling of these texts, just like contemporary Jewish handling of these texts, often reflected that the literal words on the page could, and often did, become subservient to tradition.
Drazin, Israel, and Stanley M. Wagner Onkelos on the Torah, Exodus: Understanding the Bible Text (p. 40) Gefen, 2006
Drazin, Israel, and Stanley M. Wagner Onkelos on the Torah, Exodus: Understanding the Bible Text (p. 229) Gefen, 2006
Pietersma, Albert, and Benjamin G. Wright A New English Translation of the Septuagint (p. 199) Oxford University Press, 2007
Chilton, Bruce D. The Isaiah Targum (p. 11) M. Glazier, 1987
Miller, Robert J. Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy (pp. 208-209) Wipf and Stock, 2015
Hays, Richard B. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (pp. 21-24) Yale University Press, 1989