Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Bill and Karl,

> Again, one of my favorite commands, "Look at the context." Uriah had 
> just spent
> time out in the field, just traveled from the encampment to Jerusalem, and was
> therefore dirty, sweaty, even stinky. By far the dirtiest part of 
> him was his feet,
> shod only in sandals, exposed to the dust of the camp and road. So what David
> commanded was for Uriah to go home and wash up, to feel presentable. The
> modern equivalent would be "go home and take a shower". What David wanted
> was that Uriah would not stop at a shower, rather take advantage of 
> some of the
> other comforts of his house, however, under the cercumstances, he 
> couldn't _say_
> that as that would raise suspicians in an area where David did not 
> want suspicians
> to be raised. So he merely said that Uriah go home and wash up. The 
> mistake that
> is being done here is to claim that the words expressed the hidden desires of
> David's heart whereas I understand that David purposely stopped short of
> expressing what he wanted Uriah to do so as to avoid raising suspician.

HH: On this particular point of the usage of RGLM with Uriah, I agree 
with Karl. David is encouraging Uriah to get out of the battle 
mindset and enjoy the comforts of home. By asking him to wash his 
feet David indicated that he did not need to return to the 
battlefield right away but could take a break.

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

> >  Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
> >  E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz               </   New
> >  Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax  64-3-364-2332       /)  Zealand
> >  Unix Systems Administrator                   (/'
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
>
> --
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