Sextuplets and Haggadah Translations

A few days ago, on March 15, Thelma Chiaka, a Texas woman gave birth to six babies, sextuplets, in the Woman’s Hospital in Texas, delivering four boys and two girls. The hospital reports that the odds of having sextuplets is estimated at one to 4.7 billion!

Mazal Tov, Thelma. But just so that you know, your amazing feat was apparently quite common for the Jews who were slaves in Egypt. The Midrash Rabba Shemot (1:8) tells us that:

“Each and every woman delivered sextuplets like it says in the Torah “And the children of Israel ‘Paru VaYishretzu VaYirbu VaYa’atzmu Me’od Me’od’ and the land was filled with them” (Shemot/ Exodus 1:7). [King James translation: And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.]

So this midrash states that Jewish women in Egypt delivered six babies every time and as proof for this a Bible verse is brought which states that the Jewish People in Egypt multiplied tremendously. The Bible commentator Rashi even adds that every woman did this at least 10 times, meaning 60 children in all!!

This raises two questions: Why was there a need for the Rabbis to claim that such a spectacular miracle happened (1:4.7 billion each and every time!)? And how can this verse be seen as proof for sextuplets? Maybe they delivered just triplets?

The need is clear from the statistics in other Bible verses. When Jacob with his family enters Egypt, they were 70 people in all. Exodus 1:5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.

And when they left Egypt: "The Children of Israel journeyed... 600,000 adult males on foot, besides the children." (Exodus 12:37)

Since the verse only includes the number of men who were 20 years of age and over, we can extrapolate the total population by including the women and children as well. According to Rabbi Yonasan ben Uziel (circa 1st century CE, author of an Aramaic translation of the Five Books of Moses), there were 3 million Jews in total who witnessed the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. (see Targum Yonasan – Exodus 12:37) It is probable that a comparable number of Jews left Egypt.

A simple calculation will reveal that from 70 to 3 million in the 210 years they were in Egypt is impossible through natural multiplication. Hence the need for the Rabbis to tell about extraordinary fruitfulness. But why six?! (That is what Thelma Chiaka also asked herself…)

The reason is that the original Hebrew Bible verse has six expressions for the multiplication:

“And the children of Israel ‘1. Paru 2. VaYishretzu 3. VaYirbu 4. VaYa’atzmu 5. Me’od 6. Me’od’ and the land was filled with them”. This does, however, not come through in the King James translation: “And the children of Israel were 1. fruitful, and 2. increased abundantly, and 3. multiplied, and 4. waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.” I wondered how Jewish translators have dealt with this and as this Bible verse also appears in the Haggadah, I turned to my translation corpus to check this out. The first translator of the Haggadah into English, A. Alexander (London 1770) just copied his translation from the King James Bible. So did several of his successors. Magil’s first Linear Haggadah gets to five expressions by rendering it as: And the children of Israel were 1. fruitful, and 2. increased abundantly, and 3. multiplied, and 4. grew mighty 5. very exceedingly; and the land was filled with them.

The two last expressions in the Hebrew (Me’od Me’od) mean “very very [much]” and these are the most difficult to render. The poet/ translator Regelson came up with the following translation: "And the children of Israel were 1. fruitful, and they 2. bred abundantly, and 3. multiplied, and 4. waxed 5. very, 6. very mighty, and the land was filled with them.". He was one of the first to try to stick to 6 expressions thus translating not only meaning but also form, allowing his translation to match the rabbis' claim of sextuplets in Egypt.

This is just one example of a translation going beyond the core translation of meaning. For another example, read about the Pangram in the Haggadah.