Aligned sentence by sentence
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Part One · Chapter Forty-Eight — 'He Heard' and 'He Saw': Onkelos on Divine Perception
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Everything that comes with the meaning of hearing attributed to God, exalted be He, you find that Onkelos the proselyte has avoided it and explained its meaning as the matter reaching Him, exalted be He, or that He perceived it. If it occurs in the context of prayer, he explains its meaning as either accepting or not accepting it — he always renders 'the Lord heard' as 'it was heard before the Lord,' and in the context of prayer he translates 'I will surely hear his cry' (Ex 22:22) as 'I will surely accept.' This is consistent throughout his commentary; he departs from it in no passage at all. As for what comes with the meaning of seeing attributed to Him, exalted be He, Onkelos varies in a remarkable way, the intent and purpose of which I did not immediately grasp: in some passages he renders 'the Lord saw' as ḥazā — 'the Lord perceived' — and in other passages he renders it as galī qodam — 'it was revealed before the Lord.' That he renders it as ḥazā is clear evidence that ḥazā in the Syriac language is polysemous, indicating the meaning of intellectual apprehension just as it indicates sensory perception. Would that I knew, since the matter stands thus for him, why he fled from some passages and rendered them as galī qodam.
When I reflected upon what I found in copies of the Targum together with what I heard in the course of study, I found that whenever seeing is combined with oppression, injury, or wrongdoing, he renders it as galī qodam — 'it was revealed before the Lord.' There is no doubt that ḥazā in that language entails perception and the acknowledgment of what is perceived as being what it is; therefore, when seeing is connected with an act of oppression, he does not say 'and He perceived' (ḥazā) but rather 'and it was revealed before the Lord' (galī qodam).
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I found that every instance of seeing attributed to God throughout the entire Torah is rendered as ḥazā — 'the Lord perceived' — except these which I shall describe: 'for the Lord saw my affliction' (Gen 29:32) — 'for it was revealed before the Lord, my oppression'; 'for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you' (Gen 31:12) — 'for it was revealed before me,' even though the speaker is an angel, and the acknowledgment indicating confirmed action is not attributed to the speaker but rather to God, because it is an act of oppression; 'and God saw the children of Israel' (Ex 2:25) — 'and it was revealed before the Lord, the bondage of the children of Israel'; 'I have surely seen the affliction of my people' (Ex 3:7) — 'it was surely revealed before me, the bondage of my people'; 'and also I have seen the oppression' (Ex 3:9) — 'and also it was revealed before me, the compulsion'; 'and He saw their affliction' (Exod 4:31) — 'and it was revealed before Him, their bondage'; 'I have seen this people' (Ex 32:9) — 'it was revealed before me, this people,' for its meaning is 'I have seen their sinfulness,' analogous to 'and God saw the children of Israel,' whose meaning is 'He saw their distress'; 'and the Lord saw, and was provoked' (Deut 32:19) — 'and it was revealed before the Lord'; 'for He will see that the hand is gone' (Deut 32:36) — 'for it was revealed before Him' — and this too is a situation of oppression and the enemy's domination. All of this was consistently maintained and attended to by him regarding 'Look upon iniquity — you cannot' (Hab 1:3). Therefore every instance of bondage and sinfulness he renders as galī qodamōhī or galī qodamī.
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However, there are three passages where this beautiful and compelling interpretation — of which there is no doubt — is disrupted: passages that by this same analogy ought to have been rendered as galī qodam, yet we find in the manuscripts ḥazā — 'the Lord perceived.' These are: 'and the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great' (Gen 6:5); 'and God saw the earth, and behold it was corrupt' (Gen 6:12); 'and the Lord saw that Leah was hated' (Gen 29:31). The most likely view in my estimation is that this is an error that has crept into the manuscripts, since we have no autograph of Onkelos by which we could say that perhaps he has some interpretation for this.
As for his rendering of 'God will see to the lamb' (Gen 22:8) as qodam — 'before the Lord it shall be revealed as a matter' — this is because that rendering would not give rise to the impression that God, exalted be He, is newly seeking and finding the lamb; or it may also be that it was considered unseemly in that language for His perception to be connected with a non-rational animal.
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It is necessary to investigate carefully the correct recension in this matter; and if you find these passages as I have described them, I know of no purpose he could have had in that.