A Commentary on The Book of Genesis

by

U. Cassuto

Late Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Translated from the Hebrew by

israel abrahams

Professor of Hebrew, University of Cape Town

Part I

From Adam to Noah

Genesis I–VI 8

jerusalem

the magnes press, the hebrew university

מ. ד. קאסוטו׃ מאדם עד נח

First published in Hebrew, Jerusalem 1944

Reprinted in 1953, 1959, 1965, 1969, 1974, 1978, 1983 and 1986

First English Edition, Jerusalem 1961

Reprinted 1972, 1978, 1989, 1998

©

All rights reserved by

The Magnes Press

The Hebrew University

Jerusalem 1998

ISBN 965-223-480-X

Translator’s Foreword

It must be an everlasting source of regret to all lovers of the Bible that Professor Umberto Cassuto died before he was able to complete his magnum opus, the Commentary on the Pentateuch. In the words of Bialik: ‘The song of his life was cut off in the middle … And lo! the hymn is lost for ever!’

But even the ‘unfinished symphony’ shows all the qualities of the master. He illumines every passage of the Bible that he annotates. With profound insight he reveals the inner meaning of Scriptural teaching against the background of history. He enables us to see the fascinating process of the evolution of ideas in the ancient world; and he sets the Biblical contribution to the progress of our conception of God and His providence, of the mystery and wonders of creation, of the unfoldment of the moral law within the human heart, in their true perspective. In doing all this, Prof. Cassuto, we are conscious, not only uncovers some of the noblest foundations of modern civilization, but he orients our minds anew to Hebraic ideals, which have their roots in antiquity, but the golden fruit of whose unending yield has much to offer Jew and Gentile alike in solving the contemporary crisis, frought with so much danger to mankind as a whole, and in helping to formulate the constitution of the brave new world envisioned by the prophets.

Cassuto brought a wealth of scholarship to bear on his work. His almost unrivalled knowledge of ancient Semitic literature, his authoritative understanding of all branches of Biblical inquiry, and his outstanding critical acumen marked him as one of the great Bible exegetes of our age. Endowed with a mind of unusual originality, he pioneered novel scientific methods of interpretation that amounted to a new approach to some of the major exegetical problems of the Book of books, and enabled him to batter the foundations on which the Graf-Wellhausen school rested their documentary theories and expositions. Cassuto’s strictures in regard to one particular point of interpretation (p. 190) aptly summarize his criticism of the prevailing expository method as a whole. ‘This method, he writes, ‘which establishes a given principle a priori, without taking into consideration what is expressly stated in the text, and then, placing the passage upon the Procrustean bed of that principle, hacks off the textual limbs that do not fit into the bed, can ...