Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Karl Randolph wrote:

> In view of your response to me, I had decided not 
> to respond, but now as you expanded to Yitzhak, 
> there are a few things that I think should be 
> emphasized.
>
> > From your latest responses, I wonder if you really 
> know English that well. (e.g. I have several times 
> read the phrase "he is like a dog with a bone" 
> which is an idiomatic phrase that has nothing about 
> likening a person to a dog, rather it is a comment 
> on his tenacity. That you didn't recognize it 
> reflects on your knowledge of English.)
>  


HH: You weren't using the phrase to compliment me but as part of your 
claim that I had a personal problem to make the argument I did. So you 
weren't using the phrase positively but negatively. As one element in a 
personal attack, the words become assimilated to the attack function of 
other words that preceded and followed.


> I will come back to Genesis 8:22.
>
> When you quoted many translations, my eyes glazed 
> over and I skipped that section. Translations don't 
> count. I have read Tanakh only once in translation, 
> but several times in Hebrew. If you want to 
> convince me, show me from Hebrew usage.
>  


HH: Translations reflect what scholarship thinks. Most published 
translations are monuments to scholarship.

> Similarly, your references to modern science and 
> bird migration patterns are irrelevant.
>  


HH: Karl, this list does not exist for your sake only. The references to 
bird migration patterns were relevant to the discussion I was in with 
someone else.


> As I claim, words have a circle of meaning, for 
> some their area is great, for others their range of 
> meaning can be very restricted.
>
> The word "season" even in English has a range of 
> meaning, not just the seasons (summer, fall, etc.). 
> Poetically it is used for much shorter periods, 
> such as the "season to be jolly" which, according 
> to tradition, lasted 12 days, or the "Easter 
> season" which lasted 8 days.  Thus, even if you use 
> "season" in Jeremiah 8:7, it does not necessarily 
> correspond to the seasons as in summer, fall, etc.
>  


HH: This only helps my argument. It does not hurt it in any way.


> But at question isn't the English word "season" but 
> the Hebrew "MW(D", what does it mean? Does it 
> include the four seasons as in summer, fall, etc.? 
> I see no evidence whatsoever that it does.


HH: Here's some information from the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 
which says that the word can mean "appointed time, due season, often in 
general, time, season." The dictionary notes use of the word in 
extra-biblical materials to refer to the "time of harvest," "the time of 
sowing," "the time of grass," "the times of grass," "the time of heat," 
"the times of the years." So it obviously can have a broad temporal 
reference and can refer to seasons of the year such as sowing, harvest, 
and springtime when grass grows.


> Now back to Genesis 8:22: you have an idiosyncratic 
> reading not shared by many, including myself.


HH: It is not an idiosyncratic reading but the normal, majority 
interpretation. Here is what Keil & Delitzsch wrote: "All the days of 
the earth;" i.e., so long as the earth shall continue, the regular 
alteration of day and night and of the seasons of the year, so 
indispensable to the continuance of the human race, would never be 
interrupted again." Do you see that word "again"? It means that the days 
and seasons were interrupted by the Flood and existed prior to the Flood.

The NIV Study Bible has this comment: "Times and seasons, created by God 
in the beginning (see 1:14), will never cease till the end of history." 
The NIV Study Bible rightly looks to Gen 1:14 as signaling the beginning 
of seasons, so the Flood only interrupted them.

The 1599 Geneva Study Bible had this remark: "(l) The order of nature 
destroyed by the flood, is restored by God’s promise." See that the 
order of nature is being restored, according to the Geneva Bible. That 
Bible saw the order of nature as destroyed by the Flood and the cycles 
of day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest 
as being restored.

The Nave's Topical Bible under "seasons" lists Genesis 1:14; 8:22. So it 
implies that the seasons existed fbefore the Flood.

Charles Spurgeon wrote:

For a time there had been a confusion: the seasons were mixed up, the 
perpetual downpour of the rain had almost turned day into night, and 
whether it was summer or winter could scarcely be told. The frame of 
nature seemed to be out of joint, her order suspended. And now the Lord, 
in making a promise to Noah that he would never destroy the earth again 
with a flood, also declares that while the earth remaineth there shall 
be no more of the confusion of the seasons and mingling of day and night 
which had brought such destruction upon all living things.

HH: Note that Spurgeon says the seasons had been mixed up. He did not 
say that they were appearing for the first time after the Flood. He says 
that there would be "no more confusion of the seasons," implying that 
the seasons had previously existed but were then confused.

HH: One way to consider Gen 8:22 is to note elements of nature mentioned 
that pre-existed the Flood:

Gen. 8:22 “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and 
heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

HH: We know that there was day and night before the Flood. If day and 
night preexisted the Flood, there is reason to think that the other 
pairings mentioned in Gen 8:22 also preexisted the Flood. God did not 
create day and night after the Flood, so why should we think he created 
summer and winter after the Flood?



> That verse is one of the clues that those who hold to a 
> young earth creation followed by a flood model of 
> history claim that the antediluvian world had a 
> completely different climate than the postdiluvian 
> world; that the antediluvian world had no seasons 
> as we know them today. This they derive from a 
> linguistic analysis of the verse in the context of 
> all of Genesis.
>  


HH: Genesis 8:22 is a positive formulation of the negative statement 
made in Gen 8:21:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every 
inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I 
destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

HH: Gen 8:21 states what God will not do. Because he will not do that, 
the days and seasons will go round and round.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard