Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

Gladly:

Let me recite the decree of YHWH; he said to me

"You are my son, this day have I begotten you.

Ask wealth of me and I will give it;

       the nations will be your patrimony,

      and your possessions the ends of the earth.

You will break them with a rod of iron,

            Shatter them like a potter's jar."

And now, O kings, be prudent,

        Take warning, you rulers of the earth.

Serve YHWH with reverence,

        and live in trembling, O mortal men!

Lest he grow angry and your assembly perish

        for his ire flares up quickly.

How blest are all who trust in him.

 

You are correct, GfSomsel, that ancient Hebrew did not

have word divisions. My first Hebrew teacher, Prof.
Krahmolkov, told us that if we were in doubt about a line,

always to remove all the nikudot, the matres lexiones,

and  the word divisions and then translate.

 

I like Dahood's translation because it makes sense that

since the king is speaking here, he would be addressing

the foreign kings, and reminding them they don't live forever,

rather than speaking of himself in the third person. If the latter,

there would have been an aleph suffixed, as has been noted.

 

Best,

Liz

 

 

 -----Original Message-----
From: Polycarp66 AT aol.com [mailto:Polycarp66 AT aol.com]
Sent: Fri, March 22, 2002 12:45 AM
To: lizfried AT umich.edu; b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu
Subject: Re: Psalm 2:12 and Proverbs 31 ben/bar

> In a message dated 3/21/2002 11:55:37 PM Eastern Standard 
>   Time, lizfried AT umich.edu writes: 
>
> Mitchell 
>   Dahood, a Catholic priest, 
> translates it "Serve YHWH with reverence and 
> live in trembling, O 
>   mortal men!" 
> He reads O mortal men with no consonental 
> changes: ne$e qaber, 
>   men of the grave, 
> or men appointed for the grave. 
> He compares i$ mawet (I 
>   kings 2:26) 
> bene mawet (1 Sam 26:16). 
> _______________ 
>
> Now that 
>   makes sense.  The RSV and NRSV translate "kiss his feet", but that 
>   requires emending the text from BR to RGLYW.  Maintaining the consonantal 
>   text is always preferable.  In the oldest manuscripts the letters were 
>   not always separated (in fact, as I recall, they usually weren't).  Liz, 
>   could you cite some more of Dahood's translation for context?  I'm afraid 
>   I left most of my books in storage. 
>
> GfSomsel