Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> > "Man" (2:5) is the *only* antecedent to "he" implied in the 3rd person 
> > verb at the beginning of 2:6. ...
>
> Since "man" is negated in v.5, he cannot be the subject of v.6.

This is an interesting point, but is there any evidence to support such 
rule?
Besides, there seems a transposition: no man and no water in 2:5, creation 
of man to water the surface in 2:7, and possibly man watering the surface at 
2:6.

> If you need to supply a subject for v.6, it is more likely to be YHWH 
> Elohim.

Is it, however, common for Hebrew to refer to non-immediate antecedents?

> But then you have the inconvenient word 'ED, which can hardly be a verb. 
> For there is no verb root alef-holam-dalet in biblical Hebrew.

I concur with Steinberg about the hypothetical 'ud root distilled from 
'odot.
Alternatively, we can allude to 'ud as "firebrand," so that the waterless 
earth was like a firebrand. This might be related to yaipah in 2:7: pah[im] 
is "burning coal."

> > 2:7 also seems to indicate that it was the man who breathed the dust, not 
> > God who breathed it into the man. ...
>
> No it does not. 'ADAM is explicitly marked as the object in this verse 
> with the marker 'ET.

Sure. But et refers to another phrase: God begot the man, pause, [then] he 
breathed. The formal antecedent to "breathed" is the man, though we cannot 
exclude that it was God.
At any rate, the translation "to breath in smbd" is entirely arbitrary, not 
supported, I think, by any other entries. The standard meaning is "blow at," 
so that more likely translation is "dust of the earth, it blew at his face."

> > ... A possible reason to mention that detail is that the land was dusty, 
> > not irrigated yet.
>
> Which is a very odd conclusion considering that the verse before has just 
> said that it was irrigated.

I take 2:6 - 2:7 for tranposition. Standard translations of 2:6 imply not 
irrigation, but general watering - which was already done when the waters 
were parted. And the man was created for irrigation.

wayiizer (izr) is interchangeable with wayizor (nzr). If God did not enliven 
the man by breathing into his nostrils, then Gen2:7 is not the second 
account of the creation of man. Consider nazar (bring forward) and pual 
iuzar (be dedicated). God send a man (or, some of the humanity) to irrigate 
the earth.

Vadim Cherny