Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Maurice A. O'Sullivan" <mauros AT iol.ie>]

At 18:52 07/06/2004, wattswestmaas wrote:

> Maurice can you briefly explain this emmendation by Dahood.
>
>  . By contrast 'atâ is used only twenty times, twenty-one times if one 
> accepts the emendation proposed by Dahood for Ps 74:9, "Our signs we do 
> not see, there is no longer a prophet, and no one has "come" ('ittanû > 
> 'atanû) who knows how long." Eighteen of the twenty are in the Qal and 
> two in the Hiphil (Isa 21:14; Jer 12:9) with the meaning "to bring."

Chris:
Mitchell Dahood is both translator and commentator of the Psalms, in three 
volumes of the Anchor Bible. Because of the his work on Ugaritic, it is 
natural that in the words of the blurb " his work stresses the relation of 
the Psalms to the Ugaritic texts found at Ras-Shamra..."

This is from the third edition, printed in 1986, and, inevitably, the study 
of the Psalms has moved on in the intervening 15 years, and I think it's 
fair to say that the question of the Ugaritic connection does not loom as 
large today as it then ( if I'm wrong, I'm sure I'll be corrected pretty 
quickly <g> ).

Another feature of Dahood's treatment of the Psalms, as you can see from 
his note to Ps. 74:9, is that it is quite often dependent on "re-vocalizing 
" the MT text. On that question, I leave it to my superiors <vbg>.

>> Ps. 74:9  _has come to us_: Vocalizing >'atanu< ( MT >'ittanu <) the 
verb >'ata< followed by the dative suffix >-nu<. In Biblica 45 (1964) M. 
Bogaerthas identified in Job 3:25 another instance of this verb followed by 
a dative suffix. Cf. the syntax of synonomous >ba< 'to come' in Pss. 
35:8;36:12;44:18;109:17;119:41 <<

Regards

Maurice


Maurice A. O'Sullivan  [ Bray, Ireland ]
mauros AT iol.ie