BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Annotations
David’s great-great-grandfather. 21 If from the total of 480 years we deduct 258
4 for the reign of Solomon, 70 for the life of David, and 40 spent in the
desert, it will be found that David was born 366 years after the passage of
the Jordan, and 22 therefore it is necessary that his father, grandfather,
great-grandfather, and great-great grandfather 23 , each one of them, begat
children 24 when ninety years old. 25
Annotation 17 (p. 134) ‘Samson was judge’: Samson was born after the
Philistines had conquered the Hebrews. 26
Annotation 18 (p. 136) ‘we too could’: Otherwise, one is revising the
words of Scripture rather than explaining them.
Annotation 19 (p. 137) ‘Kirjat Jeharim’: Kirjat Jeharim is also called
Baale-judah, hence Kimchi 27 and others think that Baale-judah, which
I have here translated ‘from the people of Judah’, was the name of the 259
town; but they are mistaken because baale is plural. Moreover, if this text
of Samuel is compared with the version in 1 Chronicles, we shall see that
David did not arise and leave Baal but went there. If the author of
2 Samuel intended to name the place from which David took the ark,
then to express that in Hebrew, he would have said: ‘and David arose,
and set out . . . from Baale-judah, and took the ark of God from there’.
21 ‘Thus it is not necessary to claim that this Salmonwas at least 91 years oldwhen he begat Boaz, and
that the latter was of a similar age when David was born. For on the assumption that year 4 of
Solomon’s reign is the one referred to in 1 Kings 6,the480th year after the exodus from Egypt,
David by this count was born in the 366th year after the passage of the Jordan’ [in French].
22 ‘supposing therefore that Salmon, the ancestor of David, was born during the actual passage of the
Jordan’ [in French].
23 ‘Salmon, Boaz, Obed and Jesse’ [in French].
24 ‘In succession in their extreme old age’ [in French].
25 ‘And consequently that there could hardly be 480 years from the exodus from Egypt to year 4 of the
reign of Solomon, if Scripture had not explicitly said so’ [in French].
26 ‘One may doubt whether these twenty years should belong to the years of liberty, or whether they
are included in the forty which immediately precede during which the people was under the yoke
of the Philistines. For myself, I confess that I think it is more likely and credible that the Hebrews
recovered their liberty when the princes of the Philistines perished with Samson. Thus I have
included only these twenty years of Samson among those during which the yoke of the Philistines
lasted, because Samson was born while the Philistines held the Hebrews in subjection, apart from
the fact that in the treatise on the Sabbath, mention is made of a certain book of Jerusalem, where
it is said that Samson judged the people for forty years; but the question is not about those years
only’ [in French].
27 David Kimchi (c. 1160^1235) noted grammarian, lexicographer and biblical commentator.
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