Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Uri:

In good English, "man" refers only to the male of the species.

To use an example from a different language, the German word "Frau" can be 
translated as "Missus (Mrs.), "woman" or "wife". The Germans have only one 
word, English three, so when translating from German to English one needs to 
check the context to recognize which English word fits.

So with Hebrew vs. English, Biblical Hebrew used )Y$, or for a child BN, 
where proper English would use "person", "anyone" and "child". So had I 
authored Psalm 1:1 in English first, I would have written "Happy is the 
person ..." In Hebrew we have a grammatical masculine where )Y$ stands in for 
"anyone". Overly literal translators (and I am just as guilty as anyone else) 
often put in "man" to preserve the Hebrew phrasiology, even when it does not 
fit proper English.

The Levitical passage that started this discussion, has a context indicating 
that )Y$ means "man" as in male of the species.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Uri Hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>

> 
>        Well, does the English word "man" refer to the masculine 
> gender, as one would think, or really to both masculine and 
> feminie? The term "mankind" or the expression "everyman" does refer 
> genrally to both sexes.
>     Which raises a question about your examples: what conclusions 
> about a rule can one derive from the exceptions?
> 
>      Uri
> 
> Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
> 
> But 'ish by no means always refers to an adult male, although doubtless
> it does in this context in Leviticus. It is commonly used in a much
> weaker sense "each", where the referents may include women as in Job
> 42:11, 1 Chronicles 16:3, and inanimate objects as in 1 Kings 7:30,36.
> And similarly in an indefinite sense, Psalm 1:1 is hardly restricted in
> application to adult males.
> 
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
-- 
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