The Masoretic Marks
Somewhere around the second century CE, a group of Jewish leaders decided not only what version of the older texts would be used, but how they would be read. Some markings I have already covered, such as the קרי, which means "although the word is spelled this way, you will instead read it as though a different word is in place. Here is an example of that:
Another form of marking that only occurs once is the use of a bracket to super-emphasize a verse. You can see this use of the letter nun (נ) circled in turquoise in the example below (Numbers 10:35-36):
And there are two other masoretic markings, that are used, which are in this weeks portion: (1) changing the letter size, and (2) adding dots above the text.
Highlighting Text
First, let's look at the dots.
As you can see in the section in the yellow box, there are 11 dots over three words. This is from Deuteronomy 29:28.
I chose yellow for a specific reason, because these dot groupings, where they occur, are like using a highlighter pen on the parchment.
What it means is that some unknown person who had the authority to do so felt that something was important enough to make a marking as if to say, "this is important!"
The problem is, the person who did that never tells you why, so it is always open to interpretation. Sometimes the interpretation is obvious, and sometimes it isn't. It is like reading a book with a kindle and seeing that someone else had highlighted a section of the text. If it strikes you as interesting, then you might know why it was highlighted. If not, then you might not.
And there are a LOT of commentaries on people interpreting these dots. Yet so many of them are reading far more into it than simply going, "someone 1800 years ago thought that this passage was interesting enough to highlight".
Let's think about this example for a minute.
The passage reads "Secret things are for for our Yahweh-Elohim, and the revealed things are for us and for our children forever, to do all of the words of this Torah."
Here is one interpretation that you won't find, especially by those who hold that these dots are a tradition passed on from Moses:
What was going on 1800 years ago?
Christianity was about 2 centuries old, and had not only taken the "Old Testament" as the foundation of their ideology (along with a number of New Testament texts), but had reinterpreted the Old Testament passages in ways that were...odd to the Rabbis.
Is it possible that the person in authority who highlighted that the Torah "is for US and for OUR CHILDREN" was making a statement for Jews to see? As for the last word, it can be translated as "eternity" or "witness".
That is certainly a possibility.
Letter Size Changes
The other strange marking style is the shrinking and enlarging of letters. And this one happens so close to the dotted verse that it gives some strength to the argument.
The first shrunken letter appears in the Genesis 2:4
אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, בְּהִבָּרְאָם
"These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created..."
But a changed letter size it often used to encourage an Rabbinically imposed view, so instead of the normal "when they were created", it reads "with a heh, they were created". Or, as Rashi has interpreted it, since "Yah" is composed of a yud and a heh, then this world was created with one of the letters of His name, and the world to come was created with the other letter. (The concept of a "world to come" is about as old as the Masoretic texts).
But in this week's portion you have an enlarged letter:
This verse, Deuteronomy 29:27, is just prior to the dotted verse. This verse speaks of those who would cast away their covenant and incur God's wrath by serving Gods that they had never known before, and ends with:
"...and [Yahweh] will cast you out to another land, as it is this day."
I have yet to see anyone comment on this. I was teaching a teenager how to lein, recite this, and it confused him that in this occurrence of an enlarged letter, there is no marking to indicate a change in voice that often happens.
So here is my interpretation, and it works perfectly with the verse that followed.
The three letters prefixing that word is UShY (ושי). These are also the same letters in YeShU. And the large letter with the two that follows could be read as "is yours", or "If the God Yeshu is yours, you have broken your covenant...".
This is akin to the prayer that Jews say about Christians three times a day, "For they bow to vanity and rik...and to a god that helps them not." The gematria for rik is the same value as for "YeShU". (There is an interesting history about the aleinu prayer that I may cover at another time).
Summary
As I already noted, the Masorites who added these marks did not leave notes as to why. Furthermore, there was no committee that was agreeing to add marks. And the person who did the textual tweak to verse 27 may not have been the same one who did so with verse 28. And it is also possible that a later scribe may have added his own single letter change or tapped on a few dots, and copyists included that.
We really don't know who did the markings, nor exactly when each one occurred, nor the exact intent.
Some intentions seem a bit more clear than others.
The idea that 1800 years ago, some Rabbis were ticked off enough at the Christians to make a comment in their Holy Book about their feelings does tickle me, though!
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