Biblical Hebrew Forum

["wattswestmaas" <wattswestmaas AT eircom.net>]

Hallo Uri, You Wrote:

==== But the text here, as elsewhere, lends itself to more than one
interpretation. The scribe who wrote of Abraham as "still standing" must
have had in mind a situation that involved standing, otherwise the "still"
does not make sense, and v. 8 is  the
closest.==============================================================
Reply from Chris Watts:

If I were the author of this passage and was writing in English it would be
grammatically poor for me to write: " yet Abraham was still standing before
the Lord"  (as a logical continuation of verse 8 that is).

My reason for this is because in English it would be grammatically more
'smoother' and accurate to refer to the MEMBER of the GROUP who had NOT left
the scene to be THE ONE THAT WAS STILL STANDING.  The word "yet" or "still"
as referred to in the hebrew text IS THE KEY I do believe.

If Abraham had a friend with him and they were standing before the Lord and
Abraham's friend left the group, then I would expect to read the following:
BUT Abraham was STILL standing there.

The point here is that the two angels departed from the meal under the tree
and it was God that was LEFT STILL STANDING.  This is why I think that the
emmended text (IF INDEED IT WAS EMMENDED) is not justified and this was a
case (as Peter Kirk remarked) of hypersensistivity to a theological
possibility that the scribes in question could not assimilate into their
dogma.

Chris watts, Ireland.