Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

Dear Lee,

I am sorry if I have misled you into thinking I am trying to disagree 
with you. In fact I am trying to support the thesis which I thought 
was yours by "reduction ad absurdum" of the counter-thesis: a desert 
cannot tolerate and so the niphal of YR' does not include the 
tolerative meaning component in itself. This meaning component is 
indeed a function of the context.

"Fearful" is an adjective in English, but the Hebrew equivalent NOWRA' 
is (at least in form) the niphal participle of YR', and is listed as 
such by Brown-Driver-Briggs and by Holladay, by GKC section 116e, also 
by the Westminster Morphological Database (newly released version 3) 
and Harris-Archer-Waltke. VanGemeren writes: "The ni. part. form of 
the vb. yr' I appears 44x throughout thr OT. It functions 
grammatico-semasiologically as n adj. ..." Presumably Even-Shoshan (I 
don't have this book at hand) has taken the acceptable alternative of 
listing NOWRA' as an adjective. That choice is perhaps unfortunate in 
this case as it begs the very semantic question which we are 
discussing, that is if the "tolerative niphal" can apply to niphal 
participles.

Peter Kirk