Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: furuli AT online.no
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53
  • Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 17:22:54 +0200


Dear list-members,

I would like to return to my question about the link between future reference and prophetic utterances. It seems to me that students of Hebrew have been chewing cud for a hundred and fifty years without asking whether this is good for their health, i.e. old views are repeated over and over again without anybody asking for evidence.

Apart from messages of judgment referring to people living at the time, the message of a prophet usually relates to the future (but it can occasionally include past or present reference as well). In his "A Grammar of the Hebrew Language" of 1841, p 356, Samuel Lee wrote: "Another leading principle, by which the tenses are regulated, has arisen out of the circumstance, that the Hebrews, in common with some other nations of the East, often represent events, - of the future occurrence of which they have no doubt, - as having already taken place. " How did he know? Because the Persians did the same! (BTW: Lee was a fine grammarian)

The notion of "prophetic perfect" has been repeated over and over again, but I am not aware of a single piece of evidence for its correctness that ever has been produced from one of the documents of classical Hebrew. So I must ask again. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, should we not draw the conclusion that is *is* a duck. And similarly, if a prophet refers to the future, speaks about the future, and writes about the future, should we not give the verbs future reference when they are translated? Why in the world should we translate them by past or perfect?

In my translation of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 into Norwegian, 41 of the finite verbs are translated with simple future, 7 with present, 1 with simple past, and 2 with pluperfect. I simply do not understand the linguistic basis for the use past or perfect apart from the three metioned examples. In my doctoral thesis I have translated Jeremiah 50 and 51into English, and this is a *prophecy* about Babel. In the 104 verses I have translated, the following verbs are translated with simple future: 70 yiqtols, 2 weyiqtols, 7 wayyiqtols, 49 weqatals, and 63 qatals. In addition 4 qatals are translated with future perfect. When I look at the renderings of modern Bible translations of these two chapters, I wonder what kind of logic is behind the back-and-forth, hither-and- tither use of English tenses. Can really and old obsolete rule have such a profound effect on modern translators?

Would anyone who defend the idea of verbs with future reference being translated by past or perfect please step forward and give some *linguistic* evidence for this (not just references to grammars).



Best regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
From unikom AT paco.net Sat May 15 11:35:20 2004
Return-Path: <unikom AT paco.net>
Delivered-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from snark.paco.net (snark.paco.net [195.114.128.41])
by happyhouse.metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E2842006A
for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sat, 15 May 2004 11:35:19 -0400
(EDT)
Received: from mail.paco.net (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by snark.paco.net (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id i4FFZFcd006936
for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Sat, 15 May 2004 18:35:16 +0300
(EEST)
Received: from 217.194.137.112 (proxying for 192.168.30.100)
(SquirrelMail authenticated user unikom) by mail.paco.net with HTTP;
Sat, 15 May 2004 18:35:16 +0300 (EEST)
Message-ID: <54719.217.194.137.112.1084635316.squirrel AT mail.paco.net>
Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 18:35:16 +0300 (EEST)
From: unikom AT paco.net
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=koi8-r
X-Priority: 3
Importance: Normal
Subject: [b-hebrew] Isaiah 53: In his death?
X-BeenThere: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4
Precedence: list
List-Id: Hebrew Bible List <b-hebrew.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
<mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew>
List-Post: <mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
<mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 15:35:21 -0000

Dear Harold and Emmanuel,

I love to hear meaningful arguments, thank you.

Please consider:

Ez28:10 is really simple, mentioning "deaths of the uncircumcized." Both
words are in plural, of course.

Ez28:8: They would bring you down to Sheol, and you would die, emptied by
[the] deaths, in [the] heart of [the] seas
"You" here refers not to a single man, like in Isaiah 53, but to the
nation, thus "deaths" in plural is only appropriate. The collective plural
is very common in Hebrew (e.g., lamo). Job33:22 employs the word memotei
in exactly the same way: their lives to those who bring deaths.

Another possible problem with "deaths" is the preposition be. I don't
remember encountering bemot in Tanakh (don't have a concordance at hand).
Do you?
Normally, mot is encountered either with m, or with be after the word,
such as in Judges15:18, for example.

Still another problem with "death" is that the translation "he was given"
is, of course, incorrect: it is "he gave." Obviously, it cannot be said,
"he gave in his death[s]."

Let me know your opinion.


Best regards,

Vadim Cherny



I'm far from being a Hebrew scholar yet, but Gesenius mentions something on
intensive plurals (124 e)
One might need to have a look at Ezk 28:10, where the same word is in the
plural.

Emmanuel


HH: This is understood by F. Delitzsch to be a pluralis
exaggerativus. Forms like it occur in Ezek 28:8,10 and Jer 16:4. It
would be used to indicate a violent death, the pain of which makes it
like dying more than once. You can also call it an intensive plural;
see Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley 124, particularly 124e, which states
that there are a number of plurals, found almost exclusively in
poetry (sometimes along with the singular), which are evidently
intended to intensify the idea of the stem (plural of amplification).

HH: Qumran apparently has BWMTW, which John Oswalt and BHS suspect
involves a misplaced W, so that it should be BMWTW, which would
involve a singular form>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page