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At the moment I am reading The Five Books of Moses, a new translation by Robert Alter, weighty in both senses. Here I quote from Genesis 47:8–9.

And Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?” And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojournings are a hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained the days of the years of my fathers in their days of sojourning.”

“Sojourning” is a legal term in the Hebrew, and describes the practice of nomadic tribes pitching a semi-permanent camp on some land granted them for that purpose, usually on open farmland on the outskirts of a city-state. Alter notes in his copious footnotes that here it “probably has a double connotation: Jacob's life has been a series of wanderings or ‘sojournings,’ not a sedentary existence in one place, and human existence is by nature a sojourning, a temporary dwelling between non-being and extinction.”

But, what of the repeated “days of the years”? I think this is a wonderful expression, and it is used extensively, not just here but elsewhere. Alter points out that Jacob's sombreness here is a reflection that, in true parable style, although he got everything he wanted in the course of his life, it “is not in the way he would have wanted,” and he has paid dearly for his success. When Jacob finally bites the dust at the end of the chapter, verse 28 tells us that “Jacob's days, the years of his life, were one hundred and forty-seven years,” repeating this key phrase. (Alter points out that Jacob's last sentence above is his consciousness that although his lifespan was long, it was short compared to the legendary multi-centenarian lives of his forebears.)

In fact, the phrase is a fairly widespread Hebrew idiom, and is used quite extensively throughout the lineages, along with other variants, “the years of so-and-so's life” and “so-and-so's days.” In this context of suffering, though, it made me stop and take note. It could be interpreted in light of Jacob's consciousness that he has achieved his goals at great cost: the years of his life have been good, but the days have been painful. In addition, it emphasises how much a hard life can drag on: years, the traditional unit of reckoning of lifespans, are broken down into days, the unit of reckoning, amongst other things, of periods of mourning.

To conclude, I will quote the same passage from the KJV, which contrast should show immediately how much better Alter's translation flows from the tongue. The contrast is actually this striking throughout.

And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.