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Sefer YonahSources & translation notes

Sources and translation notes

Sefer Yonah | Texts used, editions consulted, and editorial decisions


  1. Biblical text: Hebrew Tanakh, Chapters 1-4. Chapters 2-4 use the Miqra according to the Masorah text supplied by Sefaria, with cantillation removed for this learning edition. English is a direct study translation; differing interpretations are explained in the commentary.
  2. Radak: the complete commentary on Yonah 1:1-16, 2:1-11, 3:1-10 and 4:1-11. Chapter 1 retains the supplied Hebrew and English, checked against the retrieved Hebrew; Chapters 2-4 use Sefariaโ€™s Hebrew โ€œRadak on Nachโ€, compared with Wikisource. All new English translations were made for this booklet. Divine-name forms are abbreviated throughout.
  3. Radak 2:4: the obvious digital typo โ€œhayaโ€ in the phrase about the meeting of sea and river is corrected to โ€œhayamโ€, following Wikisource. Radakโ€™s 2:6 geographical alternatives and 4:6 botanical and medicinal descriptions are translated as historical claims in his commentary. The latter is not a practical remedy.
  4. Grammatical notes are retained. Nifal is the name of a Hebrew verb pattern; patah and kamatz are vowels; dagesh is the dot within a consonant; milra means stress on the final syllable. Radak 2:9 contrasts meshammerim with a causative sense: here it means keeping, not making others keep. In 3:9 the past-form verb is directed towards the future; in 4:2 the similar-looking word is a participle.
  5. Chapter 1 supplementary selections: Malbim 1:2, 1:3, 1:5, 1:10-14; Metzudat Tziyon 1:15; Rashi 1:16. A selected passage is translated completely within its printed boundaries. It is not necessarily the commentatorโ€™s entire comment on the verse.
  6. New selections: Rashi 2:1, the passage beginning โ€œA great fishโ€, excluding the separate parenthetical addition; Rashi 3:4 with the addition explicitly marked as a gloss in the source; full Malbim comments on 3:10 and 4:2. The gloss at Rashi 3:4 is not silently attributed to Rashi himself.
  7. The Gra page is a sourced secondary overview, not an edition of his Hebrew commentary. The Yom Kippur section prints complete selected passages from Megillah 31a and Mishnah Taโ€™anit 2:1. Key points, summaries and questions are editorial explanations, distinct from source translation.

Online source texts


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