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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] "Shaf`el" in Hebrew?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] "Shaf`el" in Hebrew?
  • Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 20:29:31 +0000

On 03/02/2005 19:04, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

...

It fits the context if you assume that Deborah was the speaker, but
the contextual information that tells you Deborah was the speaker
is secondary since the song is a separate unit and "And Deborah
and Barak sang" is part of the book of Judges which contains it.
Nowhere in the song does it say "I Deborah..." in any place clear.
For all we know, it could be Barak speaking here.


Well, to put this more precisely, I am assuming that this poem within the context it is found in the book of Judges is considered to be the words of Deborah and Barak. Whether in fact the poem had a different source, known or unknown to the redactor of Judges, or was composed by someone and put on the lips of Deborah and Barak, is irrelevant. Within the literary context, these are the words of Deborah and Barak. And so one would expect Deborah and Barak to refer to themselves in the first person - or even that originally third person references have been changed to first person to fit the context.

I don't know what the ancient Hebrew convention might have been, but the modern (at least English) one is that each one of the authors of a joint composition identifies himself or herself with a first person reference and a name - exactly as here.
...

So in short, my "simply wrong" applies to this parsing, but I don't
really know if it does not exist in Biblical Hebrew, since I have no
tools to search for it. It just seems very malformed and even more
problematic than shaqqamti as Shafel.


Fair enough. I am not convinced that it is malformed, but I don't have parallels (without 'ani) either. But of course sentences like 'ani YHWH dibbarti (Num 14:35) are known.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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