Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yitzhak:

We have ZPT occuring thrice in two verses, but was it black? Was it dark at 
all? As far as I know, only mineral crude is black, but once it is cleaned of 
its impurities, it is usually a clear beige liquid to almost colorless. By 
stating that ZPT = "pitch, black" are we not imposing modern, western 
understanding onto an ancient noun? Would Moses' mother have had access to 
tar made of mineral crude? I don't think so.

But if we read Song of Songs 1:6 as $ZP, we have a poetic reference to the 
person having been out in the sun and gotten tanned. Other than this one, 
disputed instance, there is no example of ZPT being a verb in  B-Hebrew.

(D is a very common word in Hebrew, so common in fact that there were some 
constructs that contained (D as one of their elements. (D )$R is a construct 
found in over 40 verses that means "until". If we accept that $- in Judges 
1:6 is a constraction for )$R, and remember in the context that this is 
Deborah singing in the first person, we have the construct "...until I, 
Deborah, arose, I, a mother in Israel, arose." which is a Qal first person 
singular.

We have no other tool than context to determine what is the meaning of a 
lexeme. If the lexeme is used only a few times, it is like looking at a low 
resolution picture - it will be blurry and details hard to pick out. If it is 
used many times, it is like looking at a high resolution picture where 
details stand out. I know of no careful lexicographer who will recognize a 
meaning based on only one occurance of a lexeme, unless there are no other 
clues, such as other occurances of said lexeme.

On the other hand, I am very reticent to assign roots where they do not 
appear in Tanakh. For example, there is no $BL (other than a noun meaning 
train of dress, used once) in Tanakh, so the happax legomai $BLWL can only be 
guessed at: the root BLL meaning to mix up, such as fodder for animals, 
doesn't seem to fit. The same with $Q(RWRT, which may be from a quadrilateral 
root as the root Q(R is not found. Or these could be loan words from other 
languages. The picture is too low resolution to be certain.

All I can say for certain is that I can see no clear evidence for a shafel 
root in B-Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "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
-- 
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