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Genesis reports Abraham being involved in a few very intense dialogues, and it is interesting to notice some of the phrases he introduces his speech with. In chapter 15, his address to God is “My lord, Hashem”.¹ When bargaining with God over the lives of the people of Sodom (chapter 18), he is more elaborate:

• Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes… (הנה-נא הואלתי לדבר אל אדני ואנכי עפר ואפר)
• Let not my Lord be angry if I go on… (אל-נא יחר לאדני ואדברה)
• And again: Here I venture to speak to my Lord… (הנה-נא הואלתי לדבר אל אדני)
• Let not my Lord be angry if I speak even this last time… (אל-נא יחר לאדני ואדברה אף-הפעם)

Appropriate language to speak with God? Maybe, but when it comes to negotiations with men, the relationship is more equal. Abraham discusses the purchase of a burial site for his late Sarah in chapter 23, and from both parties involved, the speech introduction is usually “my lord, hear me” (אדני שמעני) or “hear me, my lord” (שמעני אדני) or “no, my lord, hear me” (לא אדני שמעני) or “but if you will hear me” (אך אם אתה לו שמעני). Listening skills are in high demand, but…

… the story is not that simple. The text strangely introduces a few of these portions of direct speech with “וידבר פלוני את פלוני לאמר לו” (“And so-and-so spoke with so-and-so saying to him”). But why do we need this “to him”? In this passage and throughout the bible, “לאמר” (“saying”) indicates the beginning of direct speech.

Notably the word “to him” (לוֹ) can also be read “if only” (לוּ), the same word we find when Abraham says “if you will hear me” (לו שמעני), which is one of the few places in the passage the text doesn’t redundantly add “to him”.

One of the other times when “to him” is absent is when Ephron says “no, my lord, here me”. There is no לו (“to him”) there, but there is לא (“no”). Both are read lo!

What I may dare suggest² is moving the ends of some verses that currently end with “saying to him” so that they end with the usual “saying”. Then change the vowels of “to him” to “if only”, and we end up with a much more poetical dialogue, and even a pun:³

• A to Hs: I am a resident alien among you
• Hs to A: If you will hear us, my lord (Lu shema’enu adoni)
• A to Hs: (no intro, but a bow)
• E to A: No, my lord, hear me (Lo adoni shema’enu)
• A to E: But if you will only hear me (Akh im ata lu shema’eni)
• E to A: If you will hear me (Akh im ata lu shema’eni)
• A takes out the chequebook.

A very gentilic conversation, but a beautiful almost-homophonic play between the harsh “no” and the mannered “if only”. If only it was there in the masoretic text (before I changed it), people might see the beauty and poetry in this back-and-forth.

Notes:

1. For the non-Jews, Hashem means “the name” and refers to the tetragrammaton. [↩]
2. And yes, it is quite daring within the Orthodox world. Truth is that the vowels and verses in the bible have only fixed (with some minimal variation) since the 10th century or so, although there were certainly traditions regarding them before. See for instance Kiddushin 30a and other sources that disagree on the middle verse or count of verses in the bible in comparison to each other and to what we hold as correct. Once I’ve got through Barry Levy’s Fixing God’s Torah, I’ll probably have more to say on the topic. [↩]
3. Although I think I came up with this independently, I’m surely not the first; reading the text without vowels and punctuation as it is on the parchment makes it very easy to come up with this reading. And I’ve since seen it in BDB. [↩]