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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] leviral marriage

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  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: "Michael Abernathy" <mabernathy AT isot.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] leviral marriage
  • Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 10:40:42 +0300


"I do think that 'verb lo l'isha' etymologically means something like

concubine, or property-wise lighter than marriage."

Just to make sure that I understand you. You believe that Sarah was not Abram's wife (Gen. 20:12), nor was Rebekah Isaac's wife (Genesis 24:67), nor was Rachel Jacob's wife (Gen. 29:28), nor was Jochebed Amram's wife (Ex. 6:20), etc. Does the Scripture name a wife for any of these men?
I don't believe that the Scripture ever calls Leah Jacob's wife? What was her relationship to Jacob?

To begin with, I only present an opinion about 'verb lo l'isha,' not state a hypothesis or assert anything. The issue seems curious to me, that's it.

Now back to your examples.

In Gen20:12, Abraham is decidedly evasive. He explains why he told that Sarah is not his wife. It is only reasonable that he employs weasel phrase "like a wife." In other places, Sarah is his isha without l.

For Gen24:67, see my answers to Yigal. Though not entirely persuasive, they rise certain doubts. In the age of forty, Isaac must have been married already. He took Rivkah specifically to his mother's tent - not to his or his father's. Nothing indicates even a bit of ceremony. Note the sequence: he first took Rivkah to the tent, and only then he fall in love with her.
Another possibility is that archaic idiom acquired ceremonial sense. I compared that to Russian, "to take in the wives."

In Gen29:28 Rachel, of course, was Jacob's second wife, and thus "less-than-a-wife" sense is entirely plausible. I would say, 'verb lo l'isha' denotes a kind of marital inferiority, often associated with having several wives. Let us test the negation: is isha without l normally employed for a single wife?

In Ex6:20, the case is clear: Jochebed was Amram's aunt. There is a tradition that patriarchs and important figures followed the law even before it was given. Marrying one's aunt is, of course, a violation, and the writer consciously or not noted it.

On strictly linguistical grounds, note that l'isha is encountered with lo, thus seemingly forming an idiom which must have a certain shade of meaning. "Similar to a wife" meaning is both plausible, more or less consistent with lo l'isha contexts, and is consistent with l'noun usage as dative or (the related) comparative elsewhere.

Vadim Cherny




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