Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 01/12/2003 14:17, Yigal Levin wrote:

> As long as you ask, I found two differnt interpretations among "classical"
> Jewish commentators, all of course based on the MT k)ry "like a lion": most
> understand "like a lion [they bite] my hand and feet". Rashi even adds a
> reference to Isaiah 38:13. On the other hand, Abraham Ibn-Ezra understands
> the k)ryto be a part of the previous phrase: "a company of evildoers
> encircles me LIKE A LION; my hands and feet [are bound so I can neither
> fight nor escape]".
>  
Thank you. But I was more interested in treatments of the textual 
evidence from Nahal Hever and from LXX and other ancient versions, which 
seems to give strong evidence that MT is corrupt here.

> My wife Sharon, by the way suggested that we look into "kartu" instead of
> "karu", from KRT, "to cut off" - "they cut off my hands and feet". Any
> reactions?
>  
This is another possible reconstruction. But if so this text must have 
been damaged very early, before LXX was translated as well as before 
Nahal Hever. The advantage of reconstructing an original KR'W is that it 
requires no emendation as the LXX Vorlage, for the translators could 
have understood this as from KRH "dig", and only a simple transposition 
makes it into the Nahal Hever text K'RW.

But then it would be even simpler to posit an original K'RW and a verb 
K'R whose meaning is entirely lost; everything else is then explicable 
and there is no need to hypothesise any accidental textual change apart 
from the W -> Y for which there is evidence. By Occam's razor, one 
unknown entity is simpler than two or three.

> By the way, where does the NRSV "my hands and feet have shiveled" come from?
>  
The translators' imaginations, perhaps?

> Yigal
>
>  


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/