Biblical Hebrew Forum

["B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>]

Hi Peter,

It seems like you are pretending that the English word *heart* only refers 
to the blood-pumping organ.  It also means the center of a thing (as in "the 
heart of the sea") and the seat of the emotions (as in "I love him with all 
my heart").  These latter are very well shared with the Hebrew *leb*.  I am 
sure *heart* means a lot of other things, too, some of which are shared with 
the Hebrew *leb* and some of which are not.

English *nose* does not mean anger, is hardly connected to anger, so *nose* 
will not always work as a translation for Hebrew *aph*.

This is not so hard.

In another post you quoted as problematic:

> Jeremiah 4:4 "circumcise your hearts" (some kind of surgery?)
> Jeremiah 6:10 "their ear is uncircumcised" (more surgery not carried out?)

Jer 4:4 doesn't read like that.  Anyway, let me mention the expression (Jer 
6:10), "their ear is uncircumcised."   It would be a shame, IMO, to express 
this any other way.  Jeremiah is inventing a figure.  It is meant to be an 
arresting expression.  It is supposed to make people think.  It is supposed 
to be a little wild or shocking.  It is meant to collocate a cultic 
procedure with a part of the human being that is not only not usually 
associated with the procedure; it is a literally or naturally impossible 
image.  It is meant to confuse some people until they ask others who they 
respect what it means.  If we render this expression something like "their 
ear is closed" in our new dynamic equivalence Bible, we have not translated 
the expression, we have explained it.  The cover of our book should read 
*Explanation of the Bible*, not *Holy Bible* or *Tanakh*.

Shalom,
Bryan

You wrote:


When > On 07/01/2005 20:28, B. M. Rocine wrote:
> > ...
> >
> > Personally, I would say six such figures represents in Genesis a 
> > significantly thematic repetition to try to preserve it in translation. 
> > I think it is a shame and a disservice to any audience to obliterate such 
> > a figure by substituting an *explanation* such as "he thought" for a 
> > translation of Hebrew leb, "heart." ...
>
>
> It may be consistent to translate "heart", but it is wrong. As I pointed 
> out before, Hebrew LEB nowhere refers to the heart as an organ. The words 
> have only a limited domain of semantic overlap, which certainly does not 
> cover this expression. If you want to preserve the thematic repetition 
> (although a rather weak one if it occurs only one per 8 chapters on 
> average), a better way to do so would be to translate "he said to 
> himself".
>
> On the other hand, almost every language has compound verbal idioms, and 
> it is simply not possible to preserve those idioms in translation. For 
> example, in Genesis 29:1 literally Jacob "lifted up his feet", but every 
> one of the translations which Wayne Leman surveyed recognises that this is 
> an idiom for "went on his journey". Would you say that such a verbal idiom 
> must be translated literally? Or that this would be necessary if it was 
> used repeatedly?
>
> The phrase literally translated "long of nose" or "long of nostrils" is 
> used repeatedly and thematically a number of times as an attribute of 
> YHWH. The meaning, as followed by all translations I know, is "slow to 
> anger". Are you saying that because this phrase is thematically 
> significant it should be translated literally?
>
> --
> Peter Kirk


B. M. Rocine
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

ph: 315.437.6744
fx: 315.437.6766