Let my soul not come into their council; unto their assembly let my glory not be united; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they houghed an ox.
English: It happened that King Ptolemy gathered seventy-two elders and placed them in seventy-two houses \ldots and they wrote for him “for in their anger they slew an ox, and in their self-will they houghed a crib.”
On the daf / in context: The changes made by the elders for the Septuagint included altering “man” and “ox” so that the verse would not appear to charge the tribes with murder of a human being.
Type of Learning
Historical / textual incident preserved in the Bavli concerning the Greek translation.
What Is Learned
When the Torah was translated for Ptolemy, the elders deliberately changed the wording of this verse to avoid the appearance that the tribes had killed a man.