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THE "BLOODY HUSBAND"1) BY HANS KOSMALA Jerusalem, Israel The circumcision story Ex iv 24-26 is one of the strangest stories in the Old Testament and one of the most difficult to explain. For this very reason it has always attracted the attention of scholars. The explanations offered in more recent times 2) do not differ fun- damentally from each other, for most of them follow the traditional Rabbinic understanding of the text, which found its expression already in the Targum Onkelos. With the exception of the interpreta- tion offered by one particular school of thought the modern approach concerns itself