Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 12/21/04 2:30 AM, "Trevor Peterson" <abuian AT access4less.net> wrote:
> They're really more in parallel, so that if possible the actions could
> be taken as simultaneous. At least, the action is presented that way, so
> that the writer chooses not to give us a particular sequence for which
> happens first. And the structure makes sense, when you think about it,
> because clearly here the two actions are related to each other most
> significantly in terms of their similarity, not their chronology.

Indeed, the actions seem reciprocal to me. A human steps on a snake's head
and it bites, or a snake strikes and the human stomps on it. In a linear
text, you can't really create a "split screen" effect, but the parallel
lines is about as close to that as you can get.

By the way, I realize that the original question probably presupposed a
larger discussion about metaphysical or "spiritual" or "prophetic"
interpretations of the pronouncement, but a life of difficult subsistence
agriculture is the topic at hand, and should be the immediate context for
understanding the pronouncement (at least in the first instance).

Chris

-- 
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