Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Karl Randolph wrote:
> As for the Shafel, did the ancient Hebrews ever speak Amarna 
> Canaanite?

I think the Canaanite glosses in the Amarna tablets are an indicator
of an ancestor language to that of the Israelites, Judahites, 
Hebrews, etc.

> Song of Songs, poetry, in 1:6 I read three $- prefixes, one of them 
> before the verb $ZP. I don't see any causative in the use there 
> beyond that implied by )$R.

This has been read as Shafel from Zefet (pitch, black) = to make
black.  The sun made me black = Tanned me.  Rabin (in the
article cited above) takes exception to this, though, "for phonetic
reasons" among others.  He doesn't elaborate.

> In Judges 5:7 Deborah is singing after the fact, the context also 
> indicates that this was a victory song after the victory. So your 
> question about the perfective being used in this phrase to indicate 
> future doesn't apply.

One must be careful about using context to determine meaning
when other methods (comparative analysis of the word in other
places in the bible) are available.  Just a few verses back in the
same chapter there is an almost word-for-word correspondence
between Judges 5 and Psalm 68.  So you can't always conclude
that the context of the word currently is the original context.  But
you can determine the meaning and usage of words by comparative
analysis if they are common enough and Ad is very common.  It
seems safer then to first determine what the form of Ad as it is 
used means, and then see how it fits.  In this case, the most
common reading seems to be to understand -ty as "feminine 2nd
person" (normally just -t), and read "until you arose, Deborah."
This fits the meaning of Ad as explained above, and assumes $
is a relative pronoun, not a Shafel indicator.

> While the Shafel form may existed in other languages, I see no 
> evidence that it existed in Hebrew. Even $LHBT is used only three
>  times (according to a quick electronic search) in contexts that 
> can call into question if it is a $- prefix.

I suggest you look up the articles cited above as well, to see the 
various evidence.  In the end, like I said, it is considered by Rabin
and Soggin as external influence on Hebrew by Amorite or
Akkadian, and not an original verb form.

As for the mentioned words in which you expressed interest:
Shablul - from bll (mix fluids) but also in Arabic (made wet) and
in Akkadian (sprayed).  Various translations read it as snail, worm,
wax, etc, but all are valid for this etymology.

Sheqa(rurot - Gesenius in 1815 already read it as a Shafel from
q(r (bottom of pit), which has similar meanings in Syriac, Arabic,
and Sokort (sp?)

Soggin calls the above isolated words for which no conclusion
can be made regarding their character.

Finally, we should mention Hishtah.awwah, which in Ugaritic is
a Shafel form, so there the connection with Shafel is much
clearer  (And yet, the presence of the Hi- prefix suggests it is
used as a quadratic root $-h.-w-w in Hitapel form, I guess).

Yitzhak Sapir