Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Another point which Bryan has missed is that the Midianites of 37:28 
are very indefinite: ):ANF$IYM MID:YFNIYM SOX:ARIYM. One might even 
wonder if they are the same people as the Ishmaelites of vv.25,27 and 
later in v.28, though v.36 apparently makes this clear. Now the last 
clause of v.27 has a definite subject ):EXFYW. I wonder if the 
indefinite subject is in some sense weaker than the definite one and 
so has a range restricted to the one clause, so that the for the 
subjectless verbs WAY.IM:$:KW. and WAY.A(:ALW. the implied subject is 
the stronger, although more distant, ):EXFYW. (The verse division also 
confuses the issue, but presumably this is secondary). This would make 
sense, and almost happens in English, as in this rendering: "His 
brothers agreed, and when some Midianite merchants came by they pulled 
Joseph up out of the cistern..." - where I think an English reader 
would probably take the indefinite clause about the Midianites as 
parenthetical. But does this sort of thing happen elsewhere in Hebrew?

Bryan wrote:

"yes, i do think translations for the general public should preserve 
the under and over-specification of actants as per the Hebrew.  but i 
also think the translations should include some notes of explanation, 
if nothing else than a note observing that the Hebrew writers display 
a different sensitivity to specification of the actants and a blurb 
about possible explanations..."

I disagree. We cannot expect the general public to understand the 
subtleties of Hebrew, and they certainly wouldn't understand the type 
of note you suggest. (Indeed they wouldn't read it, as presumably it 
would be in an introduction and who reads introductions or anything 
called blurb?!) In many cases there will be in the Hebrew more or less 
subtle and untranslatable indicators disambiguating the apparent 
ambiguities of under-specification - most obviously the gender 
distinctions in the 2nd person (also those in the 3rd person in the 
language I am working with, so we are forced to add name reference to 
disambiguate in conversations between men and women), but also 
contextual clues which might work quite differently in the target 
language compared with Hebrew.

Peter Kirk