Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

At 07:30 PM 11/19/2002 +0300, S. L. wrote:
Dear List,
does anybody have an idea of how to interpret Deut 29:18 "the moist and the
dry alike" and of how to make  sense of this verse's syntax (i.e. how to
understand it verbatim)? The expression reappears in a slightly different
form  the Quern Rule of Community 1QS II 14.  
    Serge Lyosov


I'd start by pointing out that you're referring to verse 18 in the MT,
which is 19 in most English versions (since the English takes what is the
last verse of chap. 28 in the Hebrew and makes it the first of chap. 29) -
just so we're all on the same place.

My understanding is that this is a description of a person who does not
follow the covenant and does whatever his instincts demand, "to quench
thirst with drinking". In Hebrew, of course, the terms are reversed, so
literally, "to quench with drinking thirst". 

The KJV goes a little farther, "to add drunkenness to thirst" or, in the
NKJV "as though the drunkard could be included with the sober". I find it
hard to read "rawah" as "drunk".

The translation in NRSV, JPS and the like, "thus bringing disaster on moist
and dry alike" seems very farfetched to me.   

  
Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.