Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>]

>From these and other examples, the phrase L)MR is not a 
>verb, but the equivelant to the English word "quote" to put 
>into words what is commanded, declared, expressed, shouted 
>and so forth. An English example would be "As he sank in the 
>quicksand, he shouted, quote, Get me out of here!"

Of course L)MR [LEIMOR] functions as our quotation mark.  (It is one
of three words used as punctuation in a time of writing before
puncuation.  The other two are HA'IM [question mark] and HALO
[exclamation mark].)

It is for this reason that, in direct quotation in the Bible, we only
see the say-er, or "quotee," only listed before the quotation, never
after, even though generaly across the world's languages the quotee
can come either before ("He said, 'hello.'") or after ("'Hello,' he
said") the quotation.

The common translation, e.g., "God spoke unto Moses saying..." misses
the point completely.  It should be, "God said to Moses, '...'"

-Joel Hoffman

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