Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor & Julie Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Dave wrote:

> This is true, but the use of the lePN in the psalm titles could 
> indicate a 
> much earlier stratum of the language, too, since we know from 
> Ugaritic that 
> the l- preposition could sometimes mean "of" or "from."  If - and 
> I stress 
> that it's a big "if" - this is its most likely meaning in the 
> psalm titles, 
> that would very likely preclude those psalms being exilic or 
> post-exilic in 
> origin.  And since the destruction of Ugarit prevents us from 
> knowing when 
> the language shifted away from this genitive/ablative use of l-, 
> it's quite 
> possible that in Hebrew this usage persisted at least into the Davidic 
> period.

I'm not sure how much of a basis there is for comparison. The situation in 
Ugaritic seems to be bigger than just a possible use of li- meaning "from." 
As far as I know, there's no real polarity in Ugaritic prepositions attached 
to direction. So a distinction like to vs. from would be rather meaningless 
in this setting. You just use one preposition to convey motion with regard to 
some object, and context determines the precise nature of the motion. (That's 
not to say they had no means of being more explicit. They apparently had an 
-ah adverbial ending to indicate direction, as in Hebrew; but prepositions 
weren't marked according to all the categories we might expect.) The 
situation is quite a bit different in BH. For that matter, it seems like most 
other Semitic languages made this sort of distinction, even as far back as 
Old Babylonian ishtu. I'm not saying that we can't find some overlap between 
the usage of le- in BH and that of li- in Ugaritic. I just think it could be 
rather difficult to say much about timing on that basis.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics