Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> > The word has that meaning of sour or acidic in
> > post-biblical Hebrew. There are related cognates
> > with that meaning in Arabic and Aramaic. Other
> > languages mentioned with such cognates include
> > Akkadian, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Tigre, and Syriac. A
> > related word means "salt" in Coptic.
>
oh, great. And just how salt is related to leaven? Salt is preservant, the
 opposite of leaven.
 I'm prepared to discuss cognates in Akkadian and Syriac. I guess neither
you
 nor me have much idea of the other languages mentioned. Quite possibly,
 those cognates were translated based on the late Hebrew meaning; I don't
 know and neither do you.
>
> > > The translation "leaven" doesn't square with several other instances I
> > > enumerated in the original post. Particularly, Hos7:4 about bad baker
> who
> > > ceases to watch the dough until it becomes hmtz in hot oven. The
> > > conventional translational "leavened" is absurd. Dough does not leaven
> in
> > > hot oven, but is baked.
> >
> > HH: Perhaps this is the source of your problem.
> > The verse does not say that the bread is in the
> > oven. It simply says there is no need to heat the
> > oven while the bread is getting ready to bake. One
> > does not knead the dough while it is in the oven
> > either.
>
 They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker who ceaseth to
 stir from kneading of the dough until it is humtzato.
 "adulterers like an oven" surely makes no sense. More plausibly, here is
 poetic transposition, and Hosea means, "they are adulterers like the
baker."
 The baker does nothing while the dough is in the oven, and Hosea accuses
the
 people of similarly abandoning their duties.
 In any case, the dough is in the oven, and does not leaven anymore, but is
 baked. (Any woman here on the list who ever tried to bake?) "from kneading
 until humtzato" cannot mean "from kneading until leavening", that's absurd.
 It could only mean, "from kneading until being baked."
>
 Vadim Cherny
>