Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Leviral marriage - prepositions & grammar

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • To: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>, "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Leviral marriage - prepositions & grammar
  • Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:49:26 +0300

Shalom Yigal,

Well, we need to define what is less than legal wife.
The strongest case, IMO, is leviral marriage. Consider Deut26:6: a child from leviral marriage succeeds in the name of the gone brother. If that was a normal marriage, he would of course succeed in his father's name. And such marriage is consistently referred as lo l'isha.

Next, take Sarah. From a cursory look, the only time she is called l'isha is when Abraham tries to explain why she is more of a sister to him.

Next, take Rachel. She was the second wife.

Next, take Ruth. Her marriage was--to avoid discussion of normality--irregular.

l'isha occurs idiomatically with lo. If preposition l would be simply a grammatical fluke, irrelevant and meaningless, that correlation would not hold.

A notion of similarity (approaching, but not reaching) which might be seen in 'verb lo l'isha' is fundamental to preposition l.

Vadim


Roman law forbade polygamy. This did not necessarily obligate citizens (or kings) of client states, but Herod did his best to emulate Roman customs.

As far as the Bible - you have not quoted a single example of l'ishah unequivocally meaning anything "less" than a legal wife.


Herod walked a fine line between Oriental despotism and Roman "rule of law". A Roman could only have one wife at a time, so Herod was careful to dispose of one before marrying anothe.

Other monarchs in the Roman world did not care. Polygamy, I think, had to do less with fine feelings than with the practical issues of inheritance and--in the case of kings--of regency. Also, common people would have find it difficult to provide for several wives.

I do think that 'verb lo l'isha' etymologically means something like concubine, or property-wise lighter than marriage. In time, it might acquire either colloquial sense, close to concubine, or archaic and ceremonial sense. Russian, "take into [the circle of one's] wives" became ceremonial. Both interpretations are meaningful in the case of Rivka, though each remains a more or less possible conjecture.

The point is, however, that the preposition l in 'verb lo l'isha' is meaningful; not just "became a wife" (instrumental), or "took a wife" (accusative), but perhaps, "took for a wife," "took similarly to a wife" or something like that, an idiom originally different from simple "took a wife." Since "verb lo l'isha" is an idiom, it seemingly does not prove instrumental case for l'nephesh in Gen2:7. I still assert that l is always dative, and hih l always mean that subject becomes close to the object, but not strictly an object; thus, similar to it.

Vadim










Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page