Rashiרש״י

English

ורוח אלהים מרחפת AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD WAS HOVERING — The throne of Divine Glory was standing in space, hovering over the face of the waters by the breath of the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, and by His command, even as a dove hovers over its nest. In old French acoveter.

Rosenbaum–Silbermann 1929–34 · pd

Hebrew / Aramaic

Rashi on Gen 1:2, s.v. ורוח אלהים מרחפת · pd

Notes

Rashi's dove over the nest is the Bavli's dove (Chagigah 15a), not Bereshit Rabbah's unspecified bird. The Old French gloss acoveter means 'to cover, to brood' — which is exactly Jerome's incubabat. Rashi and Jerome, seven centuries apart, gloss the same Hebrew verb with the same vernacular sense from opposite sides. The Throne of Glory standing in the air is from a different source [CHECK: PdRE / Midrash Konen].

Threads

• ← parallel · Peter Abelard
  Abelard's 'volitabat' (flutter) is the sense Rashi's 'dove hovering over the nest' gives merahefet. Abelard consulted Jews on Hebrew elsewhere; no citation here. [CHECK for a documented channel]
• → cites · Babylonian Talmud
  Rashi's 'like a dove (yonah) hovering over the nest' follows the Bavli's dove (Chagigah 15a), not Bereshit Rabbah's unspecified bird ('of); the dove settles which source he is quoting.
• → echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  The Ben Zoma story is in both BR 2:4 and Chagigah 15a; Rashi's wording is the Bavli's, but Rashi elsewhere cites BR by name on 1:1–5.
• ← parallel · Jerome
  Jerome's incubabat and Rashi's Old French acoveter ('to cover, brood') give the same vernacular sense to merahefet, 700 years apart, with no possible contact. The only place on this crux where the two benches reach the same word.
• ← contests · Nicholas of Lyra
  Lyra read Rashi on this chapter and cites him by name on the very next question, but not here. Rashi has the Throne of Glory standing in the air and hovering over the face of the waters as a dove hovers over the nest; Lyra has a will over a heap of elements. Where the rabbinic reading is a picture, the Latin one at this date is a definition, and Lyra is the witness who shows that he had both in front of him and chose.