The Color of Judah’s Eyes

^{בר' מט:ח} יְהוּדָה אַתָּה יוֹדוּךָ אַחֶיךָ
יָדְךָ בְּעֹרֶף אֹיְבֶיךָ
יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ בְּנֵי אָבִיךָ.
^מט:ט גּוּר אַרְיֵה יְהוּדָה
מִטֶּרֶף בְּנִי עָלִיתָ
כָּרַע רָבַץ כְּאַרְיֵה
וּכְלָבִיא מִי יְקִימֶנּוּ.
^מט:י לֹא יָסוּר שֵׁבֶט מִיהוּדָה
וּמְחֹקֵק מִבֵּין רַגְלָיו
עַד כִּי יָבֹא שִׁילֹה
וְלוֹ יִקְּהַת עַמִּים.

^{Gen 49:8} You O Judah, your brothers shall praise,
Your hand shall be on the nape of your foes;
Your father’s sons shall bow low to you.
^49:9 Judah is a lion’s whelp;
On prey, my son, have you grown.
He crouches, lies down like a lion,
As a lioness, who dare rouse him?
^49:10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
So that tribute shall come to him
And homage of peoples be his.

The earliest mention of this onomastic combination is the Tanna Rabbi Issi ben Yehudah or Issi ben Gur Aryeh (b.Pesahim 113b; Yoma 52b). It was adopted in the Renaissance as in Rabbi Judah Leone of Modena son of Rabbi Yitzhak Abarbanel, and is frequent among Ashkenazic Jews from the 16^th century. For another example, see Genesis 49:27, בנימין זאב.

Parallel to levusho, i.e. (his) clothing. סותה is related tomasveh (Exod. 34:33 Cf. Ibn Ezra).

The Septuagint went in a different direction by translating it χαροποὶoi i.e., “to be (more) cheerful than wine”.

Strangely, Saadia interprets the phrase in Proverbs totally differently, translating it as “anger or hatred” (Hebrew from Kapih ed.):

חכלילות – כמו שאירע לאחשורש שהרג את ושתי.

Ḥakhlilut – just like what happened to Ahasuerus who killed Vashti.

Targum Onkelos, in a paean to the beauty of the territory of Judah, translates this verse:

יסמקון טורוהי בכרמוהי,
יטופון נעווהי בחמר,
יחורן בקעתיה בעיבור ובעדרי ענא

His mountains will be red with vineyards,
His vats will overflow with wine;
His valleys will be white with wheat and flocks of sheep.

See discussion in, Rafael Benjamin Posen, ביאורים פירושים ומקורות לתרגום אונקלוס [Parshegen: Explanations, Interpretations and Sources in Targum Onkelos] (Jerusalem: Machon Parshegen, 2012), 1.883-884. Although this interpretation is midrashic in nature and does not overlap with those quoted above, still, Onkelos does assume that the meaning of the word is “red.”

This is also the translation preferred by Athalya Brenner-Idan, who understands this term as an archaic word for red. See Athalya Brenner-Idan, Colour Terms in the Old Testament (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 21; Bloomsbury, 1983), 186.

סרק in Aramaic is “rouge.” See the expression:

לא כחל ולא סרק ויעלת חן

She is beautiful without mascara and without rouge.

Similarly, the Hebrew and Aramaic root חמר means wine and the color red. However, a comparison to the Arabic shows that these roots are homophones, reflecting Arabic ﺣﻤﺭ “wine” and ﺧﻤﺭ “red”.

See Ephraim A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 362, 366.

Posen (Parshegen, 883) argued for a red/white contrast that can be found in the sources:

Isa. 1:18

אִם-יִהְיוּ חֲטָאֵיכֶם כַּשָּׁנִים כַּשֶּׁלֶג יַלְבִּינוּ, אִם-יַאְדִּימוּ כַתּוֹלָע כַּצֶּמֶר יִהְיוּ.

Be your sins like crimson, They can turn snow-white; Be they red as dyed wool, They can become like fleece.

Prov. 31:21

לֹא-תִירָא לְבֵיתָהּ מִשָּׁלֶג כִּי כָל-בֵּיתָהּ לָבֻשׁ שָׁנִים

She is not worried for her household because of snow, For her whole household is dressed in crimson.

See also the description of Rabbi Yohanan having white skin and a ruddy complexion (b. Baba Mezia 84a). See also, Jonathan Jacobs, “Does Rashbam’s Commentary on the Torah Acknowledge the Commentaries of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra,” Journal of Jewish Studies 61.2 (2010): 291-304.

In my study of the order of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet, I show that the last semantic cluster is framed by the letters `ain and shin , see A. Demsky, Literacy in Ancient Israel (2012, Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik): 173-179 (Hebrew).

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) vol E (1958): 64.

Nahman Avigad “Two Hebrew Inscriptions on Wine Jars,” Israel Exploration Journal 22 (1972): 1-5.

About 2.5 litre, “a tenth” עשרון of a bath measuring about 22 litre.

Aaron Demsky, “Dark Wine from Judah,” Israel Exploration Journal 22 (1972): 233-234.