Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Herman Meester" <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>]

Many of those words occur in Job, and there the different terms
probably designate the different members of the lion family. LY$ and
$XL are used only in poetic language; this may mean they are ancient
northern-Canaanite words preserved in poetry, whereas some of the
other lion words may be from the south (Judah region). The word GWR
may mean just "young"; LB), LBY) and LBYH are one and the same word,
and feminine. This all explains most of the various words. I think
they're not all synonyms.

Even then, if you live in times with real lions walking around, you
may have more specific terms for various types of lions, say, the
harmless young, the old and slow, or the really dangerous. Cf. the
various words for various types of cows, pigs, sheep etc. that farmers
use, and that non-farmers often have hardly heard about.

For semantic field analyses, I think HALOT itself must mention a few
references to literature in the various "lion"-lemma's? I can only
give you a few German references, please tell me if you'd like to have
those.

regards, HM


2006/3/29, A. Philip Brown II <philipbrown AT apbrown2.net>:
> I'm curious if anyone knows why or has a theory as to why Hebrew
> developed/acquired a relatively large number of lexemes for 'lion.'
>
> )RY, GWR, KPYR, LB), LBYH, LY$, $XL, which omits two feminine lemmas listed
> by HALOT.
>
> Are there any studies on these synonyms? Semantic field analyses?
>
> Philip Brown
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> www.apbrown2.net
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