So, last week, I threw out a question on Facebook and Twitter asking people why grading is stressful for them, and most of the responses fell into two groups. By far, the major stress factor for a lot of people is time. They want to return essays and other work back within a week or so but also want to leave substantial, meaningful comments. The two goals can often conflict.

— Nels P. Highberg, “Are You Locked in Grading Jail?,” the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHacker blog, October 14, 2010

First, many readers insist that [the stories in Genesis] are entirely historical [despite the complete lack of corroborating evidence outside the Bible] and often assume that the truth of the text is dependent upon historical issues.

Second, when some readers see this lack of outside verification and recognize the implausibility of many of the elements of Genesis, they dismiss the book as old and useless. Ironically, these two groups operate with the same assumption that the truth and value of the book of Genesis is dependent upon how it measures up to our modern understanding of history.

— Mark McEntire, Struggling with God: An Introduction to the Pentateuch (Mercer University Press, 2008); emphasis mine

The other day, I started a brief series on Genesis 21:9, arguing against a line of interpretation that accuses Abraham’s older son Ishmael of sexually abusing his younger brother, Isaac. Part 1 simply announced the series, explaining why I decided to address this issue and how I would proceed. In this installment, I’ll focus on the Hebrew word צחק (tsachaq) and the nature of euphemism.

First, I should probably quasi-apologize to Joel Watts. He got me onto this topic by repeating something he’d read elsewhere. The first paragraph of my previous post may have unfairly cast Joel as the quintessential devil in these matters (+10 to your pop culture knowledge quotient if you can identify the quotation from memory). Actually, Joel’s simply triggered an old pet peeve. I wrote about this topic in Dynamics of Diselection a decade ago:

[A reading that implies some sort of abusive or slanderous behavior of Ishmael toward Isaac] is already evident in Gal 4:29 and in early midrash (as in Bereshith Rabbah), which portrays Ishmael as variously committing idolatry, sexual immorality, or murder. Among more recent commentators, Hamilton is “inclined to believe” that the narrator depicts Ishmael as abusing Isaac sexually (1994:78; cf. Rulon-Miller:81) or masturbating (1994:79; cf. Rulon-Miller:81; Steinberg:67 n. 69), while Wenham, although dismissing the midrashic speculations, suggests that “Ishmael was making fun of Isaac’s status or the circumstances of his birth” (1994:82). (Dynamics of Diselection, 2001, p. 84, note 16)

I’ve been thinking about this issue for a long time. Joel’s post just brought it back to the forefront of my attention.

Intimations that Ishmael molested Isaac depend entirely on taking a single word in Genesis 21:9—the aforementioned צחק—as a euphemism for sexual activity. I beg the indulgence of the Hebraists in my audience while I share the following basics with my non-Hebraist readers:

• Hebrew verb conjugations involve some of the same transformations as English verb conjugations, such as grammatical number. However, Hebrew verbs feature other conjugational dimensions as well. One of those dimensions, called the binyan, has significant effects on a verb’s meaning. Casting a Hebrew verb in a different binyan can have roughly the same range of effects as changing the voice of an English verb or adding helping verbs to an English verb.
• In the qal (“simple”) binyan, also called the G (from German Grund, “base”) stem, צחק normally means “to laugh.”
• In the pi‘el binyan, also called the D (think “double”) stem, צחק normally means something like “to amuse, to evoke laughter.”

The narrator of Genesis 21:9 uses the verb צחק, in its pi‘el participle form מצחק (i.e., צחק-ing), to describe what Sarah saw Ishmael doing. The narrator implies that witnessing this action or set of actions triggered Sarah’s insistence that Abraham dismiss Hagar and Ishmael from his household. Interpreters who consider the piel of צחק a euphemism for sexual activity here do so on the analogy of two other passages, both also in Genesis.

• In Genesis 26:8, King Abimelech of Gerar looks out his window to see Isaac and Rebekah מצחק. Isaac’s and Rebekah’s actions somehow reveal to Abimelech that this couple had lied to him by introducing themselves as brother and sister, hiding the crucial fact of their marriage to one another. Most modern English committee translations end up representing מצחק with something like “caressing” or “fondling” here.
• In Genesis 39:14, 17, Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph of an action that she describes by the pi‘el infinitive of צחק. Since her speech already stacks euphemism upon euphemism—“he came to me to lie with me,” בא אלי לשכב עמי—interpreters slide with little difficulty into considering צחק a sexual euphemism as well.

One can, however, easily justify a reading of each passage that imputes no sexual connotation at all to צחק. In the case of Genesis 26:8, I’ll bet you can think of a number non-sexual activities in which a married couple might engage with visible amusement or laughter as a result. Compare the English phrase “have fun.” I can certainly imagine many ways to “have fun” with my wife that involve social, but not sexual, intercourse. Perhaps the narrator imagines Isaac and Rebekah engaging in foreplay with a direct line of sight to Abimelech’s (second-story?) window, but perhaps the narrator simply thinks of them sharing an “inside joke” or something of that nature. In this passage, a reader can swing both ways.

Most readers may find it stretching a point to argue for an innuendo-free interpretation of צחק in Genesis 39. I myself don’t regard this argument as compelling, but I do regard it as plausible; conversely, one may plausibly impute sexual connotations to צחק in Genesis 39:14, 17, but the language doesn’t compel that reading, either. In my mind, one has a harder time resisting a sexual connotation for צחק in verse 17: “The Hebrew servant that you brought to us came to me to צחק me.” Since “come to” (בוא אל) is frequently used in biblical Hebrew to mean “have sex with,” one easily imagines that צחק בי is another roundabout way of saying the same thing. However, this sense gets harder to maintain once one takes verse 14 into account. In that earlier verse, Potiphar’s wife tells her husband’s household, “Look, [my husband] brought a Hebrew man to צחק us!” Here, a sexual euphemism actually seems most unlikely, if only because of the plural object, “us.” Whatever Potiphar’s wife specifically means by צחק, it must be applicable to the entire household.

Curiously, modern English translations actually show less preference for sexual innuendo in Genesis 39 than in Genesis 26!

Thus, the case for believing that Biblical Hebrew knew a well-established euphemistic usage of צחק for sexual activity seems quite flaccid. The well-established uses of “come” (בוא), “know” (ידע), and “sleep with” (שׁכב) as euphemisms for “to have sex,” and of “feet” (רגלים) for genitals, stand in an entirely different category. One simply cannot lay bare compelling evidence for thinking that speakers of biblical Hebrew would commonly think of צחק as a euphemism for sexual activity.

I’ll bring this post to a climax with one concluding thought about the nature of euphemism. Like beauty, innuendo is in the eye of the beholder. It’s also heavily dependent on context. Readers might find justification for imputing sexual overtones to צחק in Genesis 26:8 because the action described by צחק indicates to Abimelech that Isaac and Sarah Rebekah are married. Readers might find justification for imputing sexual overtones to צחק in Genesis 39:14, 17 because of the overt sexuality of the rest of the scene. However, these justifications operate on a very small scale. They do not give readers license to perceive sexual innuendo in any and every use of צחק, irrespective of context.

Sometimes fooling around (מצחק) might have a sexual component, and sometimes it’s just goofing off. The piel of צחק appears only seven times in the entire Tanakh. This series focuses, of course, on Genesis 21:9; this post has already discussed Genesis 26:8 and Genesis 37:14, 17. Nobody, as far as I know, proposes to read צחק as a sexual euphemism in Genesis 19:14 or Judges 16:25 (both quoted below from the NRSV):

So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up, get out of this place; for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting [צחק]. (Genesis 19:14)

And when their hearts were merry, they said, “Call Samson, and let him entertain [צחק] us.” (Judges 16:25a)

Some interpreters do impute sexual connotations to צחק in Exodus 32:6:

They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel [צחק]. (Exodus 32:6)

Few readers can find any reason to hear a sexual צחק in the scenes with Lot and Samson. Neither “Lot’s sons-in-law thought he was sexually molesting them” nor “Call Samson, and let him sexually molest us” makes any sense. As for Exodus 32:6, the imputation of sexual immorality into the golden calf incident can be detected as early as Paul (1 Corinthians 10:6–8), although I can see no justification for this in the Hebrew text of Exodus 32. Again, however, even if such a reading of Exodus 32:6 rests on something demonstrable in the text, that doesn’t justify “transferring” the sexual connotation of the context onto צחק itself and then importing that connotation into a context—Genesis 21—where there’s no other hint of sexual activity.

In sum, the biblical evidence simply doesn’t support the claim that צחק “is” a sexual euphemism in Biblical Hebrew on the same order as בוא (“come”), ידע (“know”), and שׁכב (“lie/sleep with”). Even if such evidence could be adduced—or if you ramify the slim evidence differently than I do—one must judge the possibility of euphemism on a case-by-case basis. Frankly, if you perceive sexual connotations in צחק in Genesis 21:9, I think you’re handling both the verb צחק and the idea of euphemism carelessly—or you’ve been watching too much Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. That show will mess you up.

Jim Spinti shared this tidbit a few days ago:

39% of kids (age 9-17) agree with the statement, “The information I find online is always correct.”

I have not done any formal polling, but my college students seem to have accepted a variant on this statement. Many of them seem to believe—erroneously—that the Internet is smarter than they are. When faced with a question about a particular biblical book or passage, a disturbingly high number of my students turn to Google or Wikipedia for answers instead of generating their own answers through direct interaction with the biblical text. A few years ago, when wireless Internet access wasn’t available in my classrooms, students would jump to the footnotes in their study Bibles. I wish I had a dollar for every poor answer I’ve read that was cribbed from Wikipedia. I can almost guarantee that most of those answers would have been better if the students who gave them had ignored Wikipedia and had done their own thinking based on the raw biblical text.

Joel Watts, normally a purveyor of good sense, recently revived the old slander that accuses Abraham’s older son Ishmael of committing some kind of sexual impropriety against Abraham’s younger son, Isaac, triggering Sarah’s insistence that Ishmael be expelled from Abraham’s household. Joel’s evidence for this idea—which, to be fair, Joel presents as a possibility rather than an established fact—is the use of the verb צחק in Genesis 21:9. Joel regards צחק in Genesis 26:8 as a (possible?) euphemism for sexual activity, and transposes that alleged euphemistic use of the verb into Genesis 21:9, yielding the speculation of some kind of molestation of Isaac by the older Ishmael.

This speculation is as old as the rabbis—and hangs by the thinnest of threads.

Over the next few days, I will explain, in short chunks, why I think this interpretation is baloney. In this first post, I simply want to clarify a methodological point: my comments on this interpretation will deal with Ishmael, Isaac, Hagar, Abraham, Sarah, and others as characters in an ancient narrative. I do not intend to make historical claims. I will focus on the way the narrator of Genesis 21 tells the story, without fretting about whether that story accurately reports any real-world interactions between flesh-and-blood people.

Furthermore, in this short series I will treat the canonical text of Genesis as a coherent literary work, without making any particular assumptions about how it got that way. Many modern biblical scholars—and readers who painted their interpretations long before Julius Wellhausen—have perceived Ishmael to be a young child in Genesis 21. In the canonical form of the text, Ishmael must be a teenager. But since the narrator seems to say, in Genesis 21:14, that Abraham set Ishmael on Hagar’s shoulder, a whole series of readers spanning several centuries can’t help but visualize Ishmael as a little kid. The image shown here was painted by Karel Dujardin in 1662 (click for a larger version)—before the advent of “higher criticism.” If you regard Genesis 21 as deriving from a different stream of the Abrahamic tradition than Genesis 16–18 (not necessarily a unified composition either), and you think that Genesis 21 depicts Ishmael as a child small enough for his mother to carry on her shoulder and “cast” (השׁליך) under a bush, then the whole idea of Ishmael sexually molesting Isaac becomes rather absurd. One must actually do a little violence to the “natural sense” of Genesis 21:14 to view Ishmael as a teenager; nevertheless, I will treat him as such in my subsequent discussions.

So where will I go from here? I’m glad you asked. In my next post on this topic, I will discuss the word צחק, and argue that sometimes a laugh is just a laugh. In part 3, I’ll give some attention to an important text-critical issue in Genesis 21:9. Finally, in part 4, I’ll tell you what I think is really going on in Genesis 21:9.