Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

Dora, I'm not Karl but I think I can help.

On 12/21/04 8:08 PM, "Dora Smith" <villandra AT austin.rr.com> wrote:
> What are the meanings of:

> QHL
"Assembly" or "gathering." Look at: Gen 28:3 "... that you may become a QHL
of peoples"; Num 20:10 "Moses and Aaron QHL-ed the QHL ..." Sometimes QHL is
used especially for the worshiping assembly, as in Deut 23:3 "No Ammonite or
Moabite may enter the QHL of the LORD ..." Yet this sense is provided by the
context, not the word, which can be used for any sort of gathering, as for
example in Num 15:15, "They QHL-ed against Moses and Aaron" (note that this
is the verb QHL, not the noun QHL in this instance).

> LHQT
LHQT is the "construct" or "bound" form of LHQH, which apparently means
"company, group, band." As far as I can determine, it appears only once in
the Tanakh, in 1 Sam 19:20, "When they saw the LHQH of the prophets
'prophesying' ..." 

> MW(D
"Appointed time" or "appointed place." The phrase "tent of meeting," which
occurs often in the Torah, is "tent of MW(D." The LXX renders )HL MW(D "tent
of meeting" as te skene tou martouriou, "the tent of the testimony." When
MW(D means "appointed time," LXX appears to have mostly used kairos "time."

There's another Hebrew word that means something like "congregation," (DH.
The LXX seems (in the Torah at least) to normally render QHL as ekklesia and
(DH as sunagoge ("collection, gathering, synagogue").

> I noticed that while "ekklesia" in Greek is used to translate QHL, it is
> never used for MW(D. Which word(s) did the translators of the LXX use for
> the latter? I thought that calling out for a meeting in Y(D was closer to
> ekkalew than QHL with its idea of assembling, unless the Greek understanding
> of ekklesia was necessarily a public assemblage, while MW(D could be and
> often was a private meeting? What words did the LXX use for Y(D and MW(D?
> What other words did they use of QHL? ( QHL was not always used for a called
> out meeting or assemblage, but also refered to a collection of nations, as
> in Genesis. )

-- 
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Armstrong Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info