Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 12:03:48 -0400
> From: peter_kirk AT sil.org
> Subject: Re[3]: Judges 5:30

> Dear Ben, Thank you for bringing us back down to the context. [...]
> you are right to see that this is actually a female viewpoint and
> the word chosen should be appropriate to that. The women would be
> interested in the girls as servants and simply ignore how the men
> used them.

I agree the whole thing is somewhat convoluted (Deborah and Barak
singing, and imagining that Sisera's mother says something that may be
a "coarse soldier slang" type of term, using the point of view of her
son's men) -- which makes it difficult to draw any absolutely firm
conclusion.  But on general grounds, I would have imagined that a term
used by mistresses to deprecate servant girls would emphasize
servility or lowness, or something of that nature, while the etymology
of the term _rah.am_ emphasizes biological femaleness, which perhaps
doesn't quite fit in to the proposed context (though it's difficult to
be absolutely decisive, as I mentioned).

--
Henry Churchyard   churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/