Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sujata" <shevaroys AT yahoo.com>

> Dear Harold and George,
>
> I did mean Is 64:4 in the English Bible and my
> question particularly is about the phrase "O God". In
> KJV I have "O God" in NKJV and others I have "A God",
> in JPS (Is 64:3) "A God" and in the Qumran scroll
> translation "O God". So I am wondering what is the
> exact translation from Hebrew, is it "a God" or "O
> God".
>

To a certain extent, this depends on punctuation. The cantilation marks put
the main stop (the "etnax") after "he'ezinu" - "heard". The second part of
the verse then says "no eye has seen god besides you...", to which the NKJV,
JPS etc. add "a" just to make it readable. The KJV assumes that the main
stop should be after "seen" and treats the "god" as a vocative, addressing
the verse to God, and adds the "O" before God. So the question is; does it
mean that no ear and eye have heard or seen a god like God, or that no ear
and no eye has heard or seen what you, O God, will do.

As far as your Qumran translation - since the DDS are unpointed and without
marks, whoevery did your translation was just copying from the KJV.

Yigal

Yigal