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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proverbs 5:16 - a declaration or a question ?
  • Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:38:29 -0600

Dear Karl,

M(YNTYK as a simple plural of (YN meaning eyes? Almost all the time (YN is in dual. But is it not a feminine noun, so the simple plural would end in -WT ? Correct me if I am wrong.

HH: That's right, but the only attested example of it is Hos 10:10, where the Qere reading has changed the word from "eye" to "sin."

That would make the translation "Be dispersed away from your eyes outwards into the broad streets (broad areas?) the channels of water", in other words a poetic way of saying not to look at other sources, so within the context not to be looking at other women?

HH: This does not work for me. Perhaps some other list members can approve it for you, but the water is not a symbol of other women but of the man's own possession. Nor does the translation work, for it does not function on a literal level. Nobody disperses channels of water away from someone's eyes. So it cannot work on the figurative level. You have tried to combine the literal with the figurative. The common translation, which you have spurned, although it makes perfectly good sense and is grammatically possible, works on both a literal level and a figurative level.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard



Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>


HH: The NIV takes it as a question, as does the HCSB. This goes
back at least as far as the ASV. The problem is that taken as a
declaration, Prov 5:16 would seem to contradict both 5:15 and 5:17,
the verses before and after it. They suggest the value of privacy
and guarding what is one's own, not letting it pour out in the
public streets:

Prov. 5:15 Drink water from your own cistern, running water from
your own well.
Prov. 5:16 Should your springs overflow in the streets, your
streams of water in the public squares?
Prov. 5:17 Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
--
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