Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Casanellas <pere.casanellas AT retemail.es>]

Brian Tucker wrote:

>Looking at 1 Sam 3:13 the MT in the text says, 'because his sons were 
>blaspheming for themselves.' versus the Tiq. soph. 'because his sons were 
>blaspheming God.' Tov argues that this may be an example of a change 
>because of respect for God. (66) Do you agree with this, or is there 
>another reason why the reading occurred?

The piel of "qll" never has an object with the preposition "le-". If we
accept the version "blaspheming for themselves", this would be the only
instance of such a construction.

Since the LXX have "Theon", it is very probable that the old version was
"blaspheming God". Before the time of the Masoretes, the scribes supressed
two letters of the word "'lhym" to avoid the profanation of the name of
Lord and the word was changed to "lhm". See Td Bavli Yevamoth 79a: "It is
proper that a letter be rooted out of the Torah so that thereby the
heavenly name shall be publicly hallowed."

So, the correction seems to be rightly included in the list of Tiqqune
sopherim, that is to say, changes made by early scribes in places of the
Bible where it can be thought that there is lack of respect to God.

A similar thing could be said of Gen 18:22.

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Pere Casanellas
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