basket (of Moses)

The Hebrew that is typically translated as “basket” in English is translated in the English translation by Everett Fox (first ed. 1983) as “little-ark.”

Fox explains (Translator’s Preface, p. XVIIIf.): “A powerful example of the (…) allusion occurs near the beginning of Exodus. Baby Moses, floating precariously yet fetus-like on the Nile, is one of the enduring images in the book, as children have long attested. Modern English readers, however, are seldom aware that the Hebrew word for Moses’s floating cradle — rendered by virtually all standard translations as ‘basket’ — is the same as the one used in Gen. 6:14ff. to describe Noah’s famous vessel (teiva). Preserving the connection between the two, as I have tried to do in the Exodus passage with ‘little-ark’ (and which, incidentally, the authors of the King James Version did with ‘ark’), is to keep open the play of profound meaning that exists between the two stories.”

See also papyrus.

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