Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

Hi George,

I don't know how to cut and paste hebrew text and make it displayable on this 
mailing list but if it will 
make you feel better and you instruct me how to do it I will do it for you.
My referrals to the LXX and Acts were not out of lack of ability to read this 
simple hebrew passage but to 
show that other translators much earlier and more acquainted with the 
language than us did not understand the 
agent to be YHWH himself.
Making belittling accusations is all very well but it hardly addresses the 
question at hand and I really don't 
feel like getting into an "I know b-hebrew better than you" discussion as I 
feel it would bring little of value
to the discussion.
The fact remains that the various subjects and objects in the Tanakh are not 
always as clear as we would like them to be and only context can make them 
clearer. Failing context we can look at how ancient translators viewed
them and then we can decide if we feel we are in a position to know better 
than they.
The whole theology of the torah presents yah as being too holy to view and 
both to me, to the LXX translators and 
to the author of Acts the logical conclusion is that Yah is used as a 
substitute subject as one of his messengers.
In a similar wayin English we say 'King... built such and such a bridge'. But 
do we really imagine that the King 
got off his throne and went and hauled tonnes of stone and single handedly 
erected the bridge? Not by a long 
stretch of the imagination. We reasonably conclude that the King ordered and 
was responsible for the building of 
the bridge and that hired-labourers or slaves did the actual physical labour.
In the same way, in b-hebrew, it is possible to say that Yah tried to kill 
Mose in the street when really it 
was his messenger. This is a normal manner of expression in all modern 
languages that I am familiar with.

Anyway, the later objects in the quote are far more interesting and I have 
already admitted that my interpretation 
is by no means the last word. But that is the whole point. We cannot be 100% 
sure at whose feet the skin fell 
because there are three males in the context of the story and one of which 
may have one of two identities 
(Yah/Yah's messenger). NWT has chosen to preserve the ambiguity here and 
allow the reader to reach his/her own
conclusions.
2Sam24:1 is ambiguous because the inferred subject of the second clause makes 
absolutely no sense what-so-ever
in the context of the chapter (not just the context of the entire tanakh). 
The Chronicler, who knew b-hebrew 
far better than I will ever, seemed to think that the subject of the second 
clause was not Yah and that the 
text is 2Sam24:1 allowed for another subject and I have to say that I agree 
with him. 
It is not justifiable to say that the Chronicler had problems with Yah being 
capable of 'bad' because other 
sections of Chronicles directly connect Yah with both blessing and with 
malediction.

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