Biblical Hebrew Forum

["B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>]

Hi Dave, you wrote:

>Considering the parallelism he points out when going with the LXX reading,
I
would lean toward that.  However, if we go with MT, it seems to me that the
pronominal suffix has to refer back to the wicked, since the subject
"righteous" comes after the pronoun in the second clause.  That is, CDYQ is
not there to serve as an antecedent when the -W suffix appears on BMWTW.

Your analysis on pronoun reference would represent a most helpful rule about
pronoun reference if it would hold, but I don't think it does.  Here are a
few examples in Proverbs when I think the antecedent of a pronoun follows
the pronoun rather than precedes it:  11:17, 14:13, 14:14, 17:25.  So if we
assume the MT is correct, I would lean toward bemuto referring to the
righteous one's own death.

There is another reason to prefer a reference to the righteous one, I think.
We expect, because of the special convention of parallelism in BH poetry in
general and specifically evident in Proverbs, that the second verset "out
does" or "tops" the first verset.  So while the guilty one is overtaken in
his calamity, the righteous one has refuge in even the greatest of
calamities, death.

Shalom, Bryan

B. M. Rocine
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

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