Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon AT computing.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Members:

I have difficulty in grasping the structure of Jeremiah 26:4-5. I will
summarize how I understand it, and please comments on it and the related
questions. 

(4).... 'im l'o  tishme`u    'elay   laleket   betorati 'asher
        If   not  youlisten   tome   tofollow  tomylaw   which

   natatti  liphneykem: (5) lishmo`a   'al  dibhrey 
    Iset    beforeyou        tolisten   to  wordsof

   'abhadhay   hannebhi'im  asher 'anoki sholeach 'aleykem.
    myservants theprophets  which   I     sending  toyou


The question is where infinitive "lishmo`a" is to be connected in the
whole clause. The most obvious is to make infinitive "lishimo`a"
 parallel to infinitive "laleket". But the pause marker ":" seems
to break verse (4) and verse (5) completely, so that verse (5) cannot
be connected to a part of verse (4). Moreover, "lishimo`a" in verse (5)
and "tishme`u" in verse (4) denote the same thing. So, it may be reasonble
to make both parallel although the grammatical forms of both are 
different. In fact, this is how the NIV Bible takes the passage.
Which would better?

Sincerely,
Moon-Ryul Jung,Ph.D.
Dept. of Computer Science
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea