Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Deborah Millier <deborahmillier AT yahoo.com>]

J. West wrote:

> Must we render kopher in 
> the sense of "take the place" 
> in order to render something 
> like "the wicked take the 
> place of the righteous"
> (in the same way that Haman 
> took the place of Mordechai 
> on the gallows)?

In what exact sense, I cannot say.  But one thing's
for sure: the parallelism...

"v'tahat y'sharim boged"

...leaves little doubt that we have here a
*substitution* of the "rasha/boged for the
tzadiq/y'sharim.  Can't worm our ways around that. 
Interesting that the first hemistich features two
singulars (tzadiq and rasha) while the second has a
plural (y'sharim) and a singular (boged).  Odd in one
sense, but it doesn't seem to affect the semantics at
all.  Hmmmm, ...just thinking out loud.  Thanks for
bringing up the verse, Jim.

KOL TUV,

--Michael Millier



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com