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June 22, 2004

"And"?

(Jimmy Akin)

In one of the comments boxes, a reader writes:

Jimmy, I NEED to hijacked this entry because you are the only competent people on this matter as far as I know. So please bear with me

Douay Rheims
Zech 9:9
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: BEHOLD THY KING will come to thee, the just and saviour: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Is there an "and" in the hebrew text?

I know that Zec is not talking about two different Ass. It's a Hebrew literary style. However in the RSV, the "and" is gone. I'm thinking that they took it off to compensate for the Hebrew literary style understanding (to make the reader understand that there's no two animals). But my guess is that there's actually an "and" in the Hebrew.

Help!

Happy to oblige. Sorry I couldn't do so sooner, but while I was on vacation I didn't have a copy of the Hebrew text handy.

The answer to your question is that there is an "and" at this point in the Hebrew text of this verse.

This verse is often commented upon apologetically since some see here a difficulty regarding what Jesus rode during the triumphal entry. (As with all alleged contradictions in the Bible, however, this one has a good solution.) Let me know if you need more info on that.

BTW, when you have an off-topic question there's no need to commandeer a comments box to get the message to me. Just use the e-mail address that I have on the site, and I'll try to oblige. :-)

Posted by Jimmy Akin in Hebrew | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack