Biblical Hebrew Forum

["S. L." <lyosovs AT cityline.ru>]

Dear Brian, dear Yigal,

First of all, I was having hard times understanding who is speaking in the lma’an infinitive construction. As the verses 17-18 go the speaker would be (with Yigal) this bad guy, љoreљ pore:(h) ro:(`)љ wla’na:(h). Translating more or less literally: "[18] ‘and if (wha:ya:) in hearing the words of this curse he blesses himself in his heart by saying: ‘It will be OK with me even if I (will) go in the hardness of my heart in order to destroy the saturated with the thirsty’". (I take `et to mean ‘with’, though I agree it is not obvious.)

Bryan proposes to interpret this text as follows:

lema`an yiyeh sphot ha'erets harravah veha'erets hatsme'ah
"as a result the wipe-out of the saturated land with the dry land will
come."
Indeed, the theme of the land/soil is very prominent in this chapter (cf. v.22) and in this part of Deut. But for the abstract notion of ‘the wipe-out’ I would expect not the inf. constr. but rather the well-attested deverbal noun sa:fa:(h): lema`an tihyeh sphat ha'erets... (it would be written without waw). HALAT (in the ra:we: entry) also proposes to refer the feminine adjectives to the land. If it is valid, I would tentatively suggest to connect 18b to what follows: in order to destroy everything (the watered and the thirsty [land] used here just per merismum) the Lord will not be willing to pardon him (the bad guy), etc... The general meaning would be: God will pity nothing in order to punish the wicked as used to be the case with Sodom and Gomorra (v.22). If the preposing of the lma’an phrase to the main clause is tolerable (I have not checked the evidence), the main difficulty is that we do not otherwise know this meristic figure of speech, but exactly that is the problem, since this phrase is unique anyway.

Re: the LXX translates hINA MH SUNAPOLESH hO hAMARTWLOS TON
ANAMARTHTON
"...so that the sinner may perish with the blameless."

I believe it means

‘so that the sinner do not "with-destroy" (active aor. subj.) the blameless’

One would suppose the LXX translation is based on a kind of homiletic interpretation rather than on the Wortlaut we now read in our BHS.

GK 69hN proposes to read sefet "to add", but (1) in view of the extra waw it does not commend itself, (2) how does it help to understand the text?

Serge