Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/26/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> B-Hebrew haburim:
>
> What is/are the object(s) of Deuteronomy 32:11c & d? Is it
> QN from 11a or GZL from 11b? If QN from 11a, is that from
> QNN to nest or QNH to get possession of, hence prey?

There is no QN in 11a.  There is QNW.  Any attempt to redistribute
the letters from QNW / (L to QN / W(L must recognize that such an
attempt is being made.

The question is not only what object, but what subject.  It would
seem to me that in 11c-d (as you label them) we are back to
discussing God and his nation, while 11a-b is actually an imagery
for the last part of the previous verse that describes how God
has created and watched over his people, just like an eagle
watches over his nest.  Given the parallelism, there is no reason
to suspect that QNW is anything but the root QNN.  If the root
was indeed QNH we would expect that the H (or Y) would not drop
out, and in any case then we would have QNHW -- his owner/
creator -- which is not how you would derive "prey."  In any case,
the imagery -- of an eagle arriving and waking up its nest is both
the perfect parallel to 11b, where it is described as hovering above
the birds in the nest, and also perfectly in accord with both the
consonantal spelling (no need to explain loss of H, shift of W to
next verse), and vocalization (dagesh in N).

Yitzhak Sapir