Stones as “witnesses” occur throughout תנ”ך.

Just a few examples (here without sources):

Jacob’s stone at Beth-El
The stones taken from from the crossing of the Jordan
The altar/monument on הר גריזים
The altar that the 2½ tribes build (Josh. 22:34)
The stone that Joshua takes in 24:27

Joshua 24 is Joshua’s farewell speech to the Israelites.  The beginning of this speech is a recounting of Jewish History from Abraham (from Terah really), and part of this speech is in the הגדה של פסח.  This is the first of several times in תנ”ך that the story of the Exodus is retold, each time slightly differently, with different emphasis and different purpose.  I will keep track of them in this post, and hopefully one day comment on some of the differences between the retellings.

It is fascinating that at the end of the speech Joshua gives them the opportunity to choose: they can choose יי or they can choose to go and worship their former gods, and his final words in this speech are ואנכי וביתי נעבד את יי.

After they declare themselves for יי Joshua tries to convince them that serving יי is too difficult for them!  Once they again declare for יי though, it is final.  They can’t say that they are stuck with a covenant that an earlier generation agreed to – they have now agreed themselves.

After Joshua 21:35 some manuscripts of תנ”ך have two additional verses.

I think the only other instance of this is following Nehemiah 7:67

One of the things that I find both irritating and humorous is when people try too hard to pronounce Hebrew “correctly” and mistakenly place accents מלרע when they ought to be מלעיל.

Apparently we have the opposite happening with the city of דימונה, which in Joshua 16:21 has a מרכא on the last syllable, but in Modern Hebrew we pronounce the city with the accent מלעיל.

Following the list of the 31 kings, we come to the part of the Book of Joshua which is the giving out of portions of the Land of Israel to the Israelites, both to the 9.5 tribes west of the Jordan, and the 2.5 tribes east of the Jordan.

Punctuating the long lists of towns and borders is the story of כלב בן יפנה receiving חברון as his land, a reward for his loyalty during חטא המרגלים, and a page later, 15:13-19, he offers his daughter עכסה to anyone who can conquer the city of קרית ספר.

For those who are accustomed to the Koren תנ”ך (which is a very pretty book about which I have much to say, but not in this post), as well as a number of recent printed versions of the Hebrew Bible, the format for the list of the 31 kings (did they inspire Baskin Robbins?) killed by Joshua and the conquering Israelites has 31 lines, with the name of one king on each line, a long space in the middle of the page, and the word אחד at the end of the line.  The format is reminiscent of the format of שירת האזינו.  The Koren format is depicted below in Figure 1.  I apologize for the poor photograph from my Galaxy SIII – usually I would make a proper scan, but I’m lazy tonight.

Figure 1. – Koren

As far as I can tell, beginning with Rav Mordechai Breuer’s תנ”ך published by Mossad HaRav Kook, we got a new format, with two kings on each line (Figure 2).

Figure 2. – Rav Breuer

Where does the “new” format come from, and why are there two formats?

Well, it seems that a) the “new” format is probably actually the old format, and b) there have been at least two formats for a fairly long time.  Here are some examples from Bible Manuscripts and early printed Bibles.

The Aleppo Codex has the two king per row format as shown in Figure 3, and therefore it should come as no surprise that Rav Breuer follows this format in his תנ”ך.

Figure 3 – Aleppo Codex

Here are some other old Bible manuscripts and printed editions:

Figure 4 – Cairo Codex – From the Karaite Synagogue at Abbasiya. Written in 895 by Moshe ben Asher.

Figure 5 – Leningrad Codex

Figure 6 – Spanish Bible 1260

Figure 7 – Prague Bible 1489 – (Yeshiva University Museum)

Figure 8 – Daniel Bomberg – Rabbinic Bible 1545 Venice

Joshua 10:24

וַיְהִי כְּהוֹצִיאָם אֶת הַמְּלָכִים הָאֵלֶּה אֶל יְהוֹשֻׁעַ וַיִּקְרָא יְהוֹשֻׁעַ אֶל כָּל אִישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל קְצִינֵי אַנְשֵׁי הַמִּלְחָמָה הֶהָלְכוּא אִתּוֹ קִרְבוּ שִׂימוּ אֶת רַגְלֵיכֶם עַל צַוְּארֵי הַמְּלָכִים הָאֵלֶּה וַיִּקְרְבוּ וַיָּשִׂימוּ אֶת רַגְלֵיהֶם עַל צַוְּארֵיהֶם

This spelling of ההלכוא is unusual .

Here is another story in תנ”ך where an unnamed איש appears to a man or woman, and turns out to be an angel or messenger of הקב”ה.

I prefer “messenger” to “angel”.  Although the Greek Ἄγγελος (Angelos) is a literal translation of מלאך and means “messenger”, I think that to the modern American mind “angel” conjures images of winged creatures, for which we have other evidence in תנ”ך, but which do not fit with an unnamed איש who is (mistaken for) a man.

Incidentally, the Yiddish name אנטשל is derived from the Latin “angel”, and is unusual in its being one of the relatively few Yiddish words that derive from Latin rather than German.  (I thought I had read this in Uriel Weinreich “Sabesdiker Losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic Affinity” Word 8, 360-377 (1952) – but I cannot find it right now in that article, so perhaps I came across it somewhere else.  At any rate, this article is well worth reading.

The איש has חרבו שלופה בידו.  The other characters in תנ”ך with a חרב שלופה are the מלאך who appears to the donkey of בלעם and the messenger of destruction whom הקב”ה sends to punish David for counting the people in I Chronicles 21:16.

The איש says to Joshua “כי אני שר צבא ה’ עתה באתי”.  The implication is that this is a messenger of הקב”ה for whom Joshua and the Israelites have been waiting, and it brings to mind Exodus 33:2 where הקב”ה tells Moses after the sin of the Golden Calf that His messenger will lead the Israelites into the Land of Israel, but He will not lead them Himself.