Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 11/09/2004 16:02, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> Yesterday I wrote:
>
> Ps 42:5 looks like an odd form.
>
> I apologize. i was looking at the English verse numbering and so not 
> at the right Hebrew verse. The problem with Weingreen's assertion, I 
> think, is that the Hithpael is not always either strictly passive or 
> reflexive. Ps 42:5 is a place where it seems to have a more active 
> meaning. Note this comment in GKC #54f(c) with regard to the Hithpael 
> and reciprocal action: "It more often indicates an action less 
> directly affecting the subject, and describes it as performed with 
> regard to or for oneself, in own's own special interest. Hithpael (see 
> Niphal #51e) in such cases readily takes an accusative."
>
> A number of verse references are given at this point, one of them 
> being Isa 14:2, which you have in your list of suffixed verbs. The 
> same would probably be the case for Ps 42:5, if a repointing to Piel 
> is not correct, as DCH suggests might be the need, among other 
> suggestions. But the reciprocal idea of the Hithpael as described 
> above seems applicable to leading others to the temple.
>
>                 Yours,
>                 Harold Holmyard
Harold, thank you for looking at these verses in more detail than I had 
time to do - I took longer than I had intended just extracting the list 
of references.

I must say I was wondering whether Weingreen's comment as quoted by Chris:

> "It will be understood that ONLY
> the active verbs can take suffixes, niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael are
> passives/reflexives and cannot govern an object..."
was intended to be a morphological or a semantic comment. Niphal, pual, 
hophal and hitpael are morphological categories, and it is possible that 
the morphological rules do not allow object suffixes to be attached to 
these morphological forms. However, it seems more likely that 
Weingreen's comments are intended to be understood as 1) "niphal, pual, 
hophal and hitpael are passives/reflexives"; 2) passives/reflexives 
"cannot govern an object", therefore 3) object suffixes are not found 
with niphal, pual, hophal and hitpael. The problem with this is not with 
the reasoning that 1) and 2) imply 3), but rather with the premises 1) 
and perhaps 2). For the rule in 1) is by no means invariable.

Also the rule in 2) is doubtful: in principle, a passive form of a 
ditransitive verb (one which takes two direct objects) can take a direct 
object. This is certainly true in English e.g. with "call": "He calls me 
Peter" is an active verb with two objects, and "I am called Peter" is a 
passive form with one object. And exactly the same occurs in Hebrew with 
the niphal of QR', for example in Gen 35:10 "your name will no longer be 
called Jacob". This form does not happen to occur with an object suffix, 
but in principle it could.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/