From Exodus to Mr Sammler

Further to that last line from Saul Bellow which I featured yesterday, here's a passage from an LRB review by James Wood:

Or take the moment at the end of Chapter 2 of Exodus, where the Bible-writer tells us that God began to hear the groaning of the Israelites in their Egyptian bondage: 'So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them,' says the New International Version. The King James has: 'And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.' Alter [in The Five Books of Moses - NG] has: 'And God saw the Israelites, and God knew.' Notice that the New International Version shies away from repeating the word 'God', something that fazes neither the KJV nor Alter. But Alter's reading is at once elegantly emphatic - 'and God knew' – and accurate. He informs us that the Hebrew verb has no object, and that Greek translators mistakenly tried to 'correct' it. How majestic and indeed divine that objectless 'knew' is. And Alter's version allows one to make new connections with biblical-sounding texts. Saul Bellow, who grew up reading the Hebrew Bible, and whose English was profoundly influenced by both the Tanakh and the King James Version, was very fond of that objectless verb 'knew'. Tommy Wilhelm, the hero of Seize the Day, is haplessly surrounded by people he fears are the kinds of people who 'know' (as opposed to the confused hero): 'Rubin was the kind of man who knew, and knew and knew,' Tommy thinks to himself. Mr Sammler's Planet ends with the eponymous hero reflecting that he has met the terms of his life-contract, those terms 'that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know'. This always sounded biblical to me, but Alter's translation of the line in Exodus has given me chapter and verse.

(Thanks: Sean.)