Jim Harbaugh and Textual Criticism: ‘Like Moses I am going to die leaning on my staff’
Image modified from Maize & Blue Nation used in accordance with CC-BY-2.0.
As a fan of college football and scholar of the Hebrew Bible, I don’t find too many times when these two passions of mine intersect. So as I’ve heard Jim Harbaugh, the head football coach at the University of Michigan, use a biblical allusion in recent days—possibly with a bit of a mix-up—I thought I’d jump at the chance to write a little blog post to clear it up.
For those who don’t know, this quirky head coach, who incidentally served as the inspiration for the TV character Ted Lasso, has been preparing his Michigan Wolverines to face the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The winner will go on to play in the National Championship next week. In any case, with the swarm of media coverage in the lead up to the game tonight, Harbaugh has been interviewed a number of times. Through multiple interviews, he has repeatedly praised his assistant coaches with some permutation of the following clever pun:
‘Like Moses I am going to die leaning on my staff’
I had to check what Harbaugh was referencing, as it didn’t necessarily jive with my own familiarity with the biblical narrative. After all, Moses’s death is recorded in the biblical book of Deuteronomy as follows (34.1–5; NIV):
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, 2 all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, 3 the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” 5 And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.
As far as I can tell, there is no mention of Moses dying on his staff. So where does the quote come from? The best I could find was an attribution to Lou Holtz, the former head football coach of Notre Dame. This is mentioned in a New York Times article by Karen Crouse from more than a decade ago:
At the kickoff dinner, Holtz, who was raised Catholic, acknowledged his team of supporters by name, and said, “Moses died leaning on his staff, and I, too, will die leaning on my staff.” He moved on, only to pause in midsentence, distracted by someone in the audience. Holtz leaned forward and listened. The man he calls Coach Dad was saying something. When Holtz resumed speaking, it was with a sheepish smile. “I’ve been corrected,” he said. “Peter died leaning on his staff.”
The most common church tradition holds that Peter died by crucifixion in Rome, so I’m not sure where this idea comes from either.
From what I can gather, the correct allusion is actually to the death of Jacob, as recorded in the book of Hebrews (11.21) in the New Testament:
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
This passage in Hebrews is alluding to the original story from the Torah (i.e., Genesis 47.31b), in which Jacob blesses his sons before he dies (ESV):
… Then Israel (i.e., Jacob) bowed himself upon the head of his bed.
Even here, however, we find the phrase ‘upon the head of his bed’ rather than ‘on his staff’. So what is going on? Well, in the Hebrew, the word for bed is miṭṭa, and the word for staff is maṭṭe. Because of the way the Hebrew alphabet works, both are spelled the exact same way and can be read in either way depending on the context. Apparently, different traditions of interpretation already existed in ancient times, with some reading the word as miṭṭa → ‘bed’ and others reading the word as maṭṭe → ‘staff’. In fact, the latter of these is already found in an ancient Greek translation of the Bible known as the Septuagint. It seems to cohere with the tradition found in the New Testament.
So all in all, in light of this highly condensed journey through the ancient and modern text-criticial issues surrounding this pithy play on words, if he is indeed making a biblical allusion, I think Jim Harbaugh should modify his allusion to…
‘Like Jacob I am going to die leaning on my staff’
Thank you for the interesting article. I hope you are able to make more you tube videos this year on learning Hebrew.
Benjamin:
The issue of miṭṭā versus maṭṭɛ is even more complicated than stated…by the important theory of a change in Hebrew that is generally recognized to have taken place between the 2nd to 5th Century CE called the Law of Attenuation in which a short “a” vowel shifted to an “i” vowel in closed unstressed initial syllables usually followed by an accented syllable. In other words, several hundreds years after the completion of both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint translation, words like Maryam became Miryam, Magdol became Migdol and Galʿad became Gilʿad, etc.
Thus, miṭṭā originally was probably pronounced maṭṭā. Therefore, maṭṭā and maṭṭɛ would only be distinguishable by the final vowel sound. But the writing of vowel pointing was only introduced later, in 800 CE. To the eye, they would have been indistinguishable. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary also lists a feminine version of maṭṭɛ (#4294) “staff” as (gulp!) maṭṭā. Gosh!
On a final depressing note, the seghol that is the final sound at the end of maṭṭɛ only developed in Late Hebrew. It developed as a shift from “a” or “i” vowels to ɛ (like the Greek epsilon). It is very possible that maṭṭɛ might have earlier been pronounced maṭṭā.
Bob Goodman
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
I wish to make a correction to my final paragraph above (“On a final depressing note…”). Although it is true that the seghol is the final sound at the end of the word maṭṭɛ and is from Late Hebrew, historically (according to Drs. Benjamin Suchard and W. Randall Garr), word-final -ɛ̄ would have resulted from word-final -ē that was lowered to -ɛ̄. Therefore, the word was indeed originally maṭṭē as Benjamin explained.
Sorry for any confusion.
Bob Goodman