The New Testament cites the Old Testament on its every page. My critical edition of the Greek New Testament has an appendix. In it, there are over thirty pages taking note of all of these citations and allusions. But biblical researchers who believe that the Bible is divinely inspired eventually run into a problem. Many of these citations do not strictly follow their Old Testament sources. Sometimes it is apparent that they are using a free translation of their own. At other times they engage in a sort of midrash that produces a composite text from numerous sources. But there are instances where the authors seem to use a text that is deficient in terms of textual criticism. Could the New Testament authors actually have quoted faulty Old Testament texts?
A Faulty Old Testament Text
I follow Drew Longacre’s good work over at OTTC: A Blog for Old Testament Textual Criticism. Several years ago he posted a really nice paper there on Deuteronomy 32:35-37. He makes a strong argument for the background of the Septuagint’s translation of these verses, especially in verse 35. The Revised Standard Version, like almost every other translation, follows the standard, Masoretic Hebrew text:
35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense,
for the time when their foot shall slip;
for the day of their calamity is at hand,
and their doom comes swiftly.
Deuteronomy 32:35, RSV
Longacre, for all sorts of reasons, argues that the Greek Septuagint is probably closer to the original sense of the Hebrew:
In the day of vengeance I will recompense, whensoever their foot shall be tripped up; for the day of their destruction is near to them, and the judgments at hand are close upon you.
Deuteronomy 32:35, from the Sir Lancelot Brenton translation of the Septuagint.
There are a few differences, but I’ve put the important ones for our purposes here in bold.
Longacre’s strongest argument for preferring the Septuagint here is that it offers a tighter, Hebraic parallelism than the Masoretic text. If you go back and read both of the versions above, I think that you will quickly see what he is talking about. In the Hebrew text, it is really simple to account for the shift from “in the day of vengeance” to “vengeance is mine.” It is the difference of only a few letters. And it makes more sense for the letters to fall away and render the current Masoretic text than for a scribe to supply more letters in a pre-Septuagint Hebrew text.
Deuteronomy 32:35 in the New Testament
But this is just where we have our problem. Usually, when the New Testament cites the Old, it does so with the Septuagint. But in the two places where the New Testament quotes Deuteronomy 32:35, it does not. The first is Romans 12:19, where Paul writes,
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
The other is Hebrews 10:30:
We know him who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
The Implications: Faulty Old Testament Texts in the New Testament
There are several things that are interesting about these two verses. First of all, they demonstrate that the proto-Masoretic text at Deuteronomy 32 had already in the pre-Christian period crystallized into the text-form that rabbinic Judaism preserved into modern times. (When you consider that the space between these citations and the oldest Torah manuscript is nearly 1000 years, that’s pretty significant). This also means that many of the faulty Old Testament texts also become an integral part of this manuscript family.
Secondly, apparently both Paul and the author of Hebrews intentionally chose a text that was closer to the proto-Masoretic text than the Septuagint. This is significant because both of these books have numerous citations from the Septuagint. But they either re-translated Deuteronomy 32:35, or made use of another Greek translation that was closer to the proto-Masoretic text with which they were familiar.
And this is the big problem. If scribes corrupted the proto-Masoretic text of Deuteronomy 32:35, then isn’t the fact that these New Testament authors directly cite it a mark against the divine inspiration of the texts they are composing? Isn’t this a manifest error in the Bible? Could inspired authors really cite faulty Old Testament texts?
Should It Bother Us that the New Testament Cites Faulty Old Testament Texts?
This is the sort of thing that brought on my faith crisis so many years ago. But today, this doesn’t really bother me. I do think that this is probably a corruption in the proto-Masoretic manuscript family, and that these New Testament authors did perpetuate this corruption in their citations of Deuteronomy 32:35. Paul was a brilliant rhetorician. He wasn’t a textual critic.
But I think we should take this one step further. I would argue that the quoting of this manuscript error in the New Testament also took place under the providential inspiration of the Holy Spirit, just as everything else that the biblical authors and editors wrote.
Perhaps I feel this way because I have been reading too much midrash. The rabbinic sages were aware of textual irregularities in their biblical manuscripts, and instead of worrying so much about how this could happen to their sacred texts, they considered that God allowed this as part of His plan. So, the scribal mistakes are inspired, too.
Midrash Provides a Way Out
A classic example is 1 Samuel 13:1. “Saul was . . . years old when he began to reign.” That’s how the RSV renders the faulty Hebrew text. But in the Hebrew, it literally seems to say that Saul was one year old when he became king. That’s obviously not the case. Saul’s age has disappeared from the text.
Enter midrash. In Yoma 22b of the Babylonian Talmud, there is a delightful explanation for this scribal error.
It is written: “Saul was one year old when he began to reign” (1 Samuel 13:1), which cannot be understood literally, as Saul was appointed king when he was a young man. Rav Huna said: The verse means that when he began to reign he was like a one-year–old, in that he had never tasted the taste of sin but was wholly innocent and upright.
So, the Talmud provides a spiritual explanation for the obvious fault in the manuscripts. Saul was not literally a year old, but he was innocent of sin like babies are.
The Talmud’s Response to Midrashic Skeptics
Now, you might just be skeptical about the validity of this interpretation, especially if you have studied the historical-critical exegetical methods of our day. And if that is the case, you’re in good company. Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak felt just the same as you. In fact, this was his response: “You could just as well say that he was like a one-year-old in that he was always filthy with mud and excrement.” But be careful before you reject the interpretations of the rabbis of old! Just look at what happened to poor Rav Naḥman after he said this:
Rav Naḥman was shown a frightful dream that night, and he understood it as a punishment for having disparaged Saul. He said: I humbly submit myself to you, O bones of Saul, son of Kish, and beg your forgiveness. But once again he was shown a frightful dream, and he understood that he had not shown enough deference in his first apology. He therefore said this time: I humbly submit myself to you, O bones of Saul, son of Kish, king of Israel, and beg your forgiveness. Subsequently, the nightmares ceased.
Relax: The Holy Spirit Is in Control
I think that we can do with the New Testament citations of Deuteronomy 32:35 something like what the rabbinic sages do with 1 Samuel 13:1. Paul and the author of Hebrews assumed wrongly that the proto-Masoretic text of this verse with which they were familiar was correct. It was an honest-to-goodness human error. But the Holy Spirit allowed this because you and I needed to hear what Paul has to say in Romans 12:19.
And we need to hear, specifically, what he has to say from that faulty text. Vengeance is God’s alone. You and I have no right to pursue revenge when we suffer even the greatest of outrages. Instead, we are called to trust the God of justice to call everyone to account in His own providential working in history. This is a difficult, but necessary aspect of the Christian life. And this is not a message that was originally a part of the Book of Deuteronomy. But thanks to the New Testament perpetuating and enshrining this manuscript error, it is a message that is now an integral part of Christian ethics.