page_title: Haazinu
section_title: In Samaritan interpretation
hierarchical_section_title: Haazinu / In Samaritan interpretation
caption_attribution_description: Yaakov ben Aharon, Samaritan High Priest (1896-1916) and Old Pentateuch, Nablus, West Bank. Part of a stereograph from Views of Palestine (1905). The text accompanying this image states "We are looking into the eyes of the chief representative of a religious sect, one of the oldest and certainly smallest in the world...They claim that they are the lineal descendants of the Israelites of old, from a remnant that was left when the tribes were carried into Syrian captivity...There is no doubt but that they are the representatives of the Samaritans of the time of Christ, for whom the Jews had such a deadly hatred. Here is kept with jealous care this ancient copy of the Pentateuch which is before us - one of the very oldest copies in existence. We could not have seen it on any account except in the presence of this high priest."
context_page_description: Haazinu, Ha'azinu, or Ha'Azinu is the 53rd weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the 10th in the Book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 32:1–52. The parashah sets out the Song of Moses — an indictment of the Israelites' sins, a prophecy of their punishment, and a promise of God's ultimate redemption of them.
  The parashah is made up of 2,326 Hebrew letters, 614 Hebrew words, 52 verses, and 92 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews read it on a Sabbath between the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, generally in September or October. The bulk of the parashah, the song of Deuteronomy 32:1–43, appears in the Torah scroll in a distinctive two-column format, reflecting the poetic structure of the text, where in each line, an opening colon is matched by a second, parallel thought unit.
context_section_description: As Samaritans accept only the Torah as prophetic and reject the rest of the Tanakh, they base their belief in the resurrection of the dead (ḥayyei ha-metim) entirely on Parashah Haazinu. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, the phrase "I kill and I make alive" in Deuteronomy 32:39 is pronounced Ani amit wa'aḥayei meaning "I kill and I return life", which is interpreted as "I will give life to the dead" or aḥayei et ha-met.
  Deuteronomy 32:43, "and He will expiate His land and His people", or in Samaritan Hebrew wa'kiper admato amo, has led Samaritans to interpret the phrase amit wa'aḥayei in Deuteronomy 32:39 to mean that only the righteous of the people of Israel will experience the resurrection and have a place in the World To Come (Olam Haba). Samaritans consider themselves and Jews collectively to be the people of Israel, so they believe that Jews will experience resurrection of the dead just as Samaritans will. Samaritans see this as motivation for non-Samaritans and non-Jews (gentiles) to convert and join the people of Israel if they want to have a place in the World To Come.
caption: Samaritan High Priest and Old Pentateuch, 1905
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