Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Chris:

My first question that I ask myself after your response, is there really a 
R(( root that has the meaning of “smash”?

In checking my concordance, it lists all of five verses where it is found, 
three qals (Jeremaih 15:12, Psalm 2:9 and Job 34:24) and two hitpaels (Isaiah 
24:19 and Proverbs 18:24).

Assuming that it exists, and the H- prefix is a interrogative, that makes the 
question “Will iron smash iron from the north, also bronze?” which in the 
context could refer to “Will your weapons smash the weapons of the enemy?” 
followed by verse 13 where God declares that Israel will not succeed in its 
defense, but will be handed over to the enemy.

Right off the top of my head, when an impersonal “someone” is the subject of 
the verb, does not the sentance include a )Y$ with the verb? I don’t remember 
any case where it doesn’t. Without a clear indication of an impersonal 
subject, it appears that the NIV is adding to the text.

But I’m not convinced that that root exists. For example I read Proverbs 
18:24 “The unpleasant person makes himself unpleasant,...” (where 
“unpleasant” is a very mild term for what is meant). Similarly Psalm 2:9 “You 
make things unpleasant for them...” (lit. “You unpleasant them...”).

( R(( is usually translated as “evil”, which is usually what it is referring 
to. But there are enough times where that meaning does not seem to fit, 
indicating that “evil” is a derivative, not primary, meaning for the word. 
But always it seems to indicate an “unpleasantness” that exceeds a mere 
irritant.)

I will repeat once again that I consider the tradition the Masoritic points 
represent neither arbitrary nor made up. They reflect a tradition of 
pronunciation and interpretation that existed at that time. However, I do not 
treat them as canon as I can point to specific verses where I say they are 
wrong. Most of the time I agree with them, where they make sense.

I question whether they make sense in this verse.

For one, the context of the chapter through verse 14 is dealing with the 
destruction wrought by the enemies of the people, not Jeremiah’s personal 
foes. Jeremiah inserts a little personal vignette in verse 10 where he 
complains that he is beig treated like Rodney Dangerfield, sending out 
accusations and strife but no one gives him any respect.

I think the verse makes most sense as a dependent clause, describing )YB, the 
last word of the previous verse.

In closing, however, my last posting on this subject was a sort of thinking 
out loud, dealing with a language for which we have no native speakers to 
interview, so there is a certain amount of guessing all of us are doing in 
difficult passages as this. Educated guessing, yes, but guessing nonetheless, 
made more difficult by the facts that only the consonants were recorded, and 
even then spellings were often fluid, not consistant.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>

> 
> Karl,
>
> Thanks for the comments. I do have some follow-up questions for you and all
> other interested parties.
>
> > First of all, I dont like adding to the text, so that rules out #2 below.
>
> I don't like adding to the text either, but does that really rule out the
> NIV rendering? Are they really adding anything to the text, or just making
> an indefinite subject of the verb explicit in English, which requires such
> explicitness? The old RSV does the same thing: "Can one break ... ?" I think
> both of those assume a literal "Can he break ... ?" and simply make the
> indefinite subject, implicit in the Hebrew verb, explicit in the receptor
> languge. _IF_ the translators of NIV and old RSV are reading the verse
> rightly, of course, which they may not be. But I don't think they're
> conceptually adding any words to the Hebrew.
>
> > I read the text unpointed, which gives:
> >
> > HYR( BRZL BRZL MCPWN WNX$T
>
> Okay for now. But the Masoretes did not invent their vocalizations or their
> verse divisions out of thin air. Those vocalizations and divisions represent
> the visualization of an audible tradition, and count for a lot in my book.
> So I am predisposed to follow the Masoretic vocalizations and divisions
> where they make sense.
>
> > When faced with a verse that does not have a readily understood meaning, 
> > as
> > does this one, I then ask what are the various possibilities. In
> > this one, the
> > only word that can have come from different roots is the verb (in
> > alphabetical
> > order):
> >
> > YR( to flutter or flap (in the wind) from the same root as YRY( curtain
> > RW( to sound forth (a trumpet)
> > R(H to feed
> > R(( to be displeasing from which we get the derived meaning that
> > that which is
> > evil or bad is displeasing, hence bad or evil.
>
> KB lists two verbs spelled R((, which they give as R(( I "to be displeasing"
> and R(( II "to smash, shatter." Clearly the translators of JPS, old RSV,
> NRSV, and NIV all take this to be R(( II. So too JB and NEB. KB cites Jer
> 15:12 for the usage of R(( II. So too BDB, Holladay, and the old Gesenius
> lexicon. That's a pretty impressive range of agreement on which verb this
> is.
>
> > A final question, is the prefix H- the definite article or sign of the
> > interrogative?
>
> Or for that matter the sign of a 2ms niphal or hiphil imperative, or
> infinitive? Or hophal infinitive? There are lots of reasons to affix a H-.
> But let's not get too bizarre.
>
> If the H- is a definite article then the verb must be a participle, "the one
> breaking"?
>
> > And we cant leave out the possibility that the subject for the verb may be
> > found in verse 11.
> >
> > If the prefix H- is a definite article. that limits the verb to YR( 
> > pointing
> > to a subject in verse 11. The context points to the enemies coming from
> > Babylon, a country, unless Im mistaken, has no iron itself, but must 
> > import
> > it, and unless Im mistaken, the easiest place for Babylon to
> > import it from at
> > that time was from the former Hittite empire in the north. In this case, 
> > the
> > translation would refer to the enemy the one flapping (waving is better in
> > English) iron (alluding to weapons), iron from the north, even bronze. 
> > That
> > also fits the context of the following verse where the enemy takes Judea, 
> > its
> > forces and treasures, that God has given it.
>
> _If_ one ignores the Masoretic verse division, and takes YR( as a
> participle, this could work. However, I am not persuaded by your lexical
> treatment of YR(. In its _one_ attested usage in the Tanakh (not counting
> the verse in question, of course), YR( is clearly an intransitive verb. I'm
> not really comfortable taking one instance of an intransitive YR( "to
> quiver, tremble," where the subject is a _nephesh_, and leaping from that to
> a transitive YR( meaning "wave about" with "enemy" as the subject and
> "iron," metonymic for weapons, as the direct object. That seems to me a big
> leap. Perhaps a case could be made if the verb were a hiphil participle of
> YR(, "cause to shake" or something like that, but we clearly don't have that
> here. I don't think your usage of YR( will hold up.
>
> Also, I'm not really sure if the "context" of Babylonian incursion is
> decisive. Are the "enemies" of v. 11 the Judeans' Babylonian enemies, or are
> they Jeremiah's Judean enemies? In the immediate literary context of the
> paragraph, the latter makes more sense to me.
>
> > If H- prefix is a sign of the interrogative, then  the subject would be 
> > iron,
> > and I see no easy translation that fits the context. Look at the
> > four possible
> > roots, does any give an easy translation? E.g. Does iron feed iron from 
> > the
> > north, also bronze? Huh? The same problem exists for a meaning of flapping
> > (waving), sounding forth, even to be displeasing though there is probably 
> > a
> > stronger case for that than the others.
>
> But if you recognize the verb as R(( II, "to break," you get perfectly
> sensible readings. The problem is that you get multiple perfectly sensible
> readings (depending on what you think the implied answer is) and I'm not
> sure how to adjudicate between them.
>
> 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
-- 
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm