Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Peter:

First of all, as a person who has done most of his work in 
B-Hebrew as a lexicographer, I understand Rolf Furuli's 
contention that there are linguistic constructs that have 
"uncancellable semantic meaning". For me, the basic one is 
the lexeme itself. For me, it is the recognition of a 
lexeme's basic meaning that provides clues as to an 
application of a literary device or clarification of an 
obscure sentence.

But that "uncancellable semantic meaning" is a point time 
one, because lexemes change meaning over time. In the 
question below, I see no change over the time period that 
Tanakh was written.

Which brings up the reason I titled this message as above: 
when looking at the meaning for XSD, used as both a verb 
and a noun well over 100 times in Tanakh, I found that it 
has the basic meaning as a verb as "to treat with (often 
undeserved) good favor", or as a noun "(undeserved) good 
favor". So where does it have an opposite meaning? The 
concordance I use lists three possible times, Leviticus 
20:17, Proverbs 14:34, 25:10, but each makes sense using 
the above meaning, so where is the opposite meaning?

Karl W. Randolph. 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
> 
> ...
>
> For one thing, there are well attested cases of words being used in
> polar opposite senses distinguished only by context, such as XESED in
> Hebrew ...
> 
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/

-- 
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