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“Forty Days and Nights”: Flood Duration and Stylistic Symmetry in the Septuagint
Καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ὑετὸς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς τεσσαράκοντα ἡμέρας καὶ τεσσαράκοντα νύκτας (Genesis 7:12 LXX)
וַֽיְהִ֥י הַגֶּ֖שֶׁם עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ אַרְבָּעִ֣ים יֹ֔ום וְאַרְבָּעִ֖ים לָֽיְלָה׃
Repetition, Judgment, and Liturgical Rhythm
Genesis 7:12 repeats a central refrain in the Flood narrative: the precise duration of divine judgment. This verse employs biblical numerical parallelism to convey duration and completeness—forty days and forty nights. Both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint preserve this structure, but the Greek introduces smoother coordination and lexical variation that gently shifts the style while keeping theological weight intact.… Learn Hebrew
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