Commentary Inf XXXI 67

The garbled speech that issues from Nimrod's mouth has caused a veritable orgy of interpretive enthusiasm. The reader should be aware that we are not at all sure about what these words looked like when they left Dante's pen; as nonsense, they may have caused more scribal confusion than others. Hence, any attempt to 'construe' them should be extremely cautious, which has certainly not been the case. (Berthier, in his commentary [DDP Berthier.Inf.XXXI.67-69], speaks of a poem of Rutebeuf, 'Le miracle de Théophile,' in which the earlier French poet also uses unintelligible words to represent demonic speech.) Dante has variously been assumed to have known more Aramaic or Arabic or Hebrew than he likely could have, and to have deployed this arcane knowledge in creating a meaningful phrase. For a review of various attempts to make these words 'make sense,' with bibliography, see Ettore Caccia, 'Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi' (ED.1973.4). And see C.Inf.VII.1, where Plutus also speaks five garbled words. While it is nearly certainly true that we are not meant to be able to understand Nimrod's words (that is the point Virgil makes, after all), it is nonetheless likely that they, like those of Plutus, should be seen as corrupted versions of words that do make sense. 'Raphel' can hardly fail to remind us of the name of the archangel Raphael, 'maì' seems a version of the Italian word for 'ever' (or 'never'), 'amècche' could be a series of simple words (a me che: 'to,' 'me,' 'that'), 'zabì' sounds like a slide into dialectal speech, and 'almi' is perfectly good Italian for 'holy,' 'divine.' The point is not that these words make any sense; it is rather that they do not. Like Plutus's outburst, they are meant to be understood as corrupted speech. And, as was true in that case, they are intended to keep these intruders out of the place this guardian has been posted to guard. See Chiari (Chia.1967.1), p. 1107, who argues that Nimrod's cry is the product of anger and menace common to all infernal guardians.

These five words may refer to St. Paul's desire that the Corinthians speak five words with understanding rather than ten thousand in tongues (I Cor. 14:19), as was first noted by Pézard (Peza.1958.1), p. 59; he was supported by one commentator, Giacalone in 1968 (DDP Giacalone.Inf.XXXI.69), and then by Kleinhenz (Klei.1974.1), p. 283n. Hollander (Holl.1992.1) attempts to take this 'program' into passages in Purgatorio and Paradiso.

For the importance to Dante of St. Paul, who does not appear as a personage in the Commedia, see Angelo Penna and Giovanni Fallani, 'Paolo, santo,' ED.1973.4; Giorgio Petrocchi (Petr.1988.1).