Whose house?

The case of whose house in Judges 19:18.

The 1984 Reference NWT had:

We are passing along from Bethlehem in Judah to the remotest parts of the mountainous region of Ephraim. That is where I am from, but I went to Bethlehem in Judah; and it is to my own house that I am going, and there is nobody taking me on into the house.

The footnote for “my own house” said: “To my own house,” LXX (compare vs 29); MSy, “to Jehovah’s house”; Vg, “to God’s house.” But KB, p. 369, states that in this case “Jehovah” may be a misunderstanding of the first-person sing. pronoun “my.”

KB is the Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros, by L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, Leiden, Netherlands, 1953. This is what it says on page 369:

Figure 1

In other words, this transformation of the Hebrew text is proposed:

Figure 2^[1]

Since the LXX also had only “my house,” it could be that the Greek translators were looking at a Hebrew text that lacked the Tetragrammaton there.

Moving on, the current 2013 NWT has:

We are traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to a remote area of the mountainous region of Ephraim, where I am from. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to the house of Jehovah, but nobody is taking me into his house.

So now the input of KB was not followed. Additionally, this explanation was provided for the inclusion of the Tetragrammaton here: “one occurrence [of the Tetragrammaton] at Judges 19:18 was restored as a result of further study of ancient manuscripts.”^[2] No ancient manuscript was identified, but the Aleppo Codex has it there.

Lastly, the NET Bible has:

I had business in Bethlehem in Judah, but now I’m heading home.

Its footnote says:

Heb “I went to Bethlehem in Judah, but [to] the house of the LORD I am going.” The Hebrew text has “house of the LORD,” which might refer to the shrine at Shiloh. The LXX reads “to my house.”

As noted above with the Reference NWT footnote, complicating this text of Judges 19:18 is Judges 19:28-29, where the man simply went home. So, the situation in Judges 19:18 is ultimately a judgment call. It’s not something to be dogmatic over.

Notes from Study Bibles
Jewish Study Bible: This has “House of the LORD,” but has this note: “Meaning of Heb. uncertain; emendation yields “to my home”; cf. v. 29.”

Faithlife Illustrated Study Bible: This has the same as above, and notes: “It is unclear why the Levite would reference visiting Shiloh (or Bethel), where it seems the ark of the covenant was kept (18:31; 20:18). This may be why the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the OT, reads “my house” instead (compare 19:29).”

Robert Alter Translation: He too retains the Tetragrammaton, yet notes: “This is a little odd because there is no indication that he lives in a sanctuary back in the far reaches of the high country of Ephraim.” He adds: “Many, following the Septuagint, emend the two Hebrew words here to read, “to my house.””

So these refer to two things: the oddity of going to the holy shrine, and him going to his home in Judges 19:29.

Footnotes:
^[1] Courtesy of Bruno Neuckermans.
^[2] The Watchtower, December 2015. A Living Translation of God’s Word, 10.

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