Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dave wrote:

> Gordon, "Ugaritic 
> Textbook" p. 92 in my edition, lists Ps 84:12 "withold from";

This is the only instance where mana' takes its complement in l-. It's 
difficult to say much about what the sense is here. One could avoid the issue 
by treating it something like "withhold with regard to" or by appealing to 
the the fact that this is a statement of irrealis. But I'm not trying to deny 
that there are ever uses in Hebrew that might head in this direction. My 
point is that I think there's a major difference between the circumstances in 
Ugaritic and those in BH.

> 2 Kgs 4:24 
> "prevent from";

This is not a clear instance. The sense could be, "Do not restrain your 
driving for my sake."

> Gen 16:2 same;

This example uses an object suffix and has nothing to do with l-. Indeed, 
min- is used with the infinitive, as we might expect.

> Josh 3:12 as well as Josh 4:2,4, 
> all of which 
> are clear examples of this usage.

I wouldn't think so. The distributive construction in 3:12 and 4:2 seems 
quite idiomatic, and there's no clear reason why l- couldn't be understood 
simply as "for." Whatever it's doing, it obviously has to be taken with min 
as part of one construction, which could end up determining the whole sense.

> In these and several of the Ugaritic 
> examples, I really don't see the idea of "motion" expressed.  Gen 16:2 
> "prevented from bearing" hardly conveys motion, and 2 Kgs 14:28 
> "restored...from Judah to Israel" appears to convey ownership.

"Motion" was a simplistic summary. That's my fault. My point is that the 
Ugaritic prepositions seem to have complete freedom to indicate either 
direction in whatever relationships they describe.
  
> So I really 
> don't see where the situation is so different in BH.  Indeed, 
> since Gordon 
> also lists numerous examples of b- meaning "from" and describes 
> this usage as 
> "not uncommon," perhaps BH is more like Ugaritic in terms of polarity of 
> prepositions than we previously thought.

Or perhaps Gordon is finding what he wants to find. One thing you haven't 
addressed is the almost complete absence of min in Ugaritic. This is a major 
component in the distinction, because as I indicated before, most Semitic 
languages have different prepositions to indicate directional polarity. 
Ugaritic is somewhat anomalous in its lack of this feature, and this is my 
point. In Ugaritic, the issue is systemic. Prepositions simply can't polarize 
the way they do in other Semitic languages. Hebrew may show some oddities 
here and there, but the general polarity is present. That's why I'm hesitant 
about using Ugaritic as a basis for arguing the kind of point you were trying 
to make. It's hard enough to justify this category of usage by comparison 
with Ugaritic; to draw conclusions about dating is, as far as I can tell, 
altogether uncalled for.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics