Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Lee Roy Martin <lmartin AT vol.com>]

Vadim,
Given your concern for the literal, if you insist on rejecting bemotav 
as "death" then you should translate it as "his high places," not "his 
altars".  The word bamah means "back", or  "high place".  If a high 
place is used for worship it may include an altar or a shrine, but the 
Isaiah 53 text does include the words altar or house, both of which are 
occur in other texts along with the word bamah.
If the high place is  a cultic place of burial, as it seems to be in 
Ezek. 4:7, then you still have the problem of the plural form= "his 
burial places".
In light of the parallelism of the verse, I would either translate as 
"his death" or "his burial", and accept the plural as intensive.
Lee R. Martin





On May 15, 2004, at 2:46 AM, unikom AT paco.net wrote:

> Well, since the argument started to deviate into a messianic debate, 
> may I
> suggest to concentrate, to begin with, on a single word:
>
> bemotav
>
> It is uniformly translated as
>
> in his death.
>
> How so? The word is in plural in every mss, even in Qumran.
>
> So, it is either,
>
> in his deathS,
>
> or, from boma,
>
> his altars
>
> I would love to read any arguments to the contrary.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Vadim Cherny
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