26:5 Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering9 Aramean10 was my ancestor,11 and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number,12 but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people.
tn Though the Hebrew term אָבַד (’avad) generally means “to perish” or the like (HALOT2–3s.v.; BDB 1–2s.v.; cf. KJV “a Syrian ready to perish”), a meaning “to go astray” or “to be lost” is also attested. The ambivalence in the Hebrew text is reflected in the versions where LXX Vaticanus reads ἀπέβαλεν (apebalen, “lose”) for a possibly metathesized reading found in Alexandrinus, Ambrosianus, ἀπέλαβεν (apelaben, “receive”); others attest κατέλειπεν (kateleipen, “leave, abandon”). “Wandering” seems to suit best the contrast with the sedentary life Israel would enjoy in Canaan (v. 9) and is the meaning followed by many English versions.
10
snA wandering Aramean. This is a reference to Jacob whose mother Rebekah was an Aramean (Gen 24:10; 25:20, 26) and who himself lived in Aram for at least twenty years (Gen 31:41–42).