Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Søren:

(LM as a verb is used over 20 times in Tanakh, sometimes as niphal 
(Passive), hiphil (causative) and hitpael (reflexive), as well as 
hundreds of times as (WLM “unknown span of time” sometimes not 
always as a synonym for eternity, a few times as T(LMWT for unknown 
(hidden) things, once as “the unknown”, and so forth. The concept 
that pulls all of the different uses together is that all uses 
share the idea of being or making unknown, where the unknown thing 
is sometimes unknown because it is hidden. In other words, it is 
used often enough in enough different contexts that we are able to 
get a fairly good idea as to its meaning.

Therefore when we look at (LMH referring to a woman, unless it 
refers to a stranger (of which I know of no examples), the 
unknownness would have to refer to something unknown about the 
woman. Seeing as the opposite, to know a woman indicated sexual 
intercourse, then for a woman to be unknown means that she has 
never experienced sexual intercourse, i.e. (LMH is the technical 
term for “virgin”.

Its use in Psalm 46:1 seems to support that meaning. My 
understanding from surrounding cultures is that women were 
sometimes allowed to practice certain cultic activities (such as 
public singing) only as long as they remained virgins (sexual 
activity, not marriage per se, rendered a woman unfit). So it does 
not surprise me to find a reference in Psalms that appears to 
follow the same practice.

As to the claim that words have the same trilateral roots without 
being semantically related, I find that it is far less common than 
claimed by BDB. In fact, if one limits oneself to roots attested to 
in Tanakh, such occurances are rare. But then I take the attitude 
to assume unless there is good evidence to the contrary that all 
words from an expressed root are semantically related, where the 
relation is similarity of action: thus I often see relationship 
based on action where BDB see differences based on form.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Søren Holst" <sh AT teol.ku.dk>
>
> Karl,
>
> By all means the LXX rendered 'almah as parthenos (which in most 
> cases DOES mean virgin) in the pre-christian period, and thus 
> chose a word with a narrower semantic field for its translation. 
> I see no reason to doubt it. I'm not out to say christians were 
> in bad faith when interpreting Isaiah or anything like that.
>
> But I'm afraid I don't see why 'almah should mean "unknown one" 
> just beacuse the verb lehe'elim means "to ignore". There are 
> plenty of cases, where words have identical triliteral roots 
> without being semantically related.
>
> Nor do I see why "unknown one" should mean virgin, just because 
> Gen 4:1 (and plenty of other passages) have the verb yada' in the 
> sense of "have intercourse". This is very interesting speculative 
> interpretation, but it's certainly not linguistics.
>
> As I pointed out previously, a woman referred to as an 'almah, 
> would certainly be expected to be a virgin if not yet married. So 
> virgins are included in the category of 'almah, and therefore the 
> biblical passges with 'almah are not rendered nonsensical if we 
> follow the LXX in narrowing the semantic field of the word. But 
> if I check all occurrences of 'almah and betulah, I find no 
> instance where 'almah must be translated as "virgin" in order for 
> the text to make sense -- the situation is quite different for 
> betulah, as may be seen from Gen 24,16.
>
> sincerely,
> Soren

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