Judah ibn Balaam’s commentary on Samuel and its place in the history of exegesis

Abstract

Arye Zoref’s article discusses Ibn Balaam’s commentary on the biblical book of Samuel. The biblical commentaries of Rabbi Judah Ibn Balaam, who lived in Spain in the eleventh century, have for the most part been studied and published. This is not the case regarding his commentary on Samuel, of which excerpts are presented in this article. Zoref gathered various Genizah fragments of the commentary together with citations from it that are included in the commentary of R. Isaac ben Samuel the Sephardi. On this basis, he tries to assess Ibn Balaam’s place in the history of biblical exegesis and how he was perceived by the commentators who came after him, especially R. Isaac ben Samuel the Sephardi and Nahum of Jerusalem. Special attention is paid to the term muʾarrikh which is understood by Ibn Balaam to be the biblical narrator. The article also includes editions of the fragments and their translation into Hebrew.