Who Counted Righteousness to Whom?
Untangles the grammatical ambiguity of Genesis 15:6 - whether Abram counted God's promise as righteous, or God counted Abram's faith as righteous - through the shifting views of Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), showing that his 1858 Italian translation silently reversed his own earlier published commentary, and that a rediscovered 1858 letter reveals Shadal came to align with Rashi and Onkelos against his own decades-long position, apparently in reaction to the Christian doctrine that faith alone constitutes righteousness.
Klein examines the grammatical ambiguity of Genesis 15:6 - “and he counted it to him for righteousness” - where it is unclear whether Abram attributed righteousness to God’s promise, or God attributed righteousness to Abram’s faith. Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) argued in his published commentary that crediting faith itself as righteousness is a Christian rather than Jewish idea, yet his own 1858 Italian translation of the verse contradicts that very commentary. A letter Shadal wrote that same year to the periodical Ha-Maggid reveals he had in fact reversed his position after more than thirty years, aligning with Rashi and Onkelos on textual and grammatical grounds - a revision his commentary, unrevised at his death, never came to reflect.
Cite this article
Daniel A. Klein. "Who Counted Righteousness to Whom?." Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, no. 1 (January – March 2008): 28–32.
Daniel A. Klein. "Who Counted Righteousness to Whom?." Jewish Bible Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1, 2008, pp. 28–32.