Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Polycarp66 AT aol.com>
> I'm not sure that this is an adequate answer.  If RKB means the one who is
> sitting upon that which is ridden, then certainly even poetic license
would not
> account for calling a person a "rider" of a horse before horses were
generally
> used in such fashion.  I would suggest rather that RKB in Ex 15.1 does not
> mean "rider" but rather "chariot."  If we look at Ex 14.6, it states that
> WaY.e):SoR )eT_RiC:B.ow. "and he yoked his chariot."  I would therefore
suggest that
> we should understand 15.1 in this sense "the horse and its chariot . . ."
>

Nice idea - read "sus werikbo" instead of "sus werokbo". I suppose that
semantically it's possible. But would the chariot be spoken of as belonging
to the horse? Verse 4 speaks of "markebot par(oh wexeylo" - the chariots of
Pharaoh and his troop. Note the use of "merkaba" for chariot, rather than
"rekeb". The chariots belonged to Pharaoh, not to the horses. From the
context, I'd stick with "horse and his rider". I have no idea whether the
Egyptians used cavalry in the 12th century, but even if this is an
anachronism, I can live with that. As I've already said, I don't think that
anyone can prove that this is a particularly early text.

By the way, does anyone have any new ideas about what the "$l$ym"
(shalishim) of verse 4 are?

Yigal