Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/12/06, Gary Hedrick wrote:

>      Is there anything in the B-Hebrew archives regarding chemdat nashyim
> ("desire of women") in Daniel 11:37?  Many commentators say this Hebrew
> phrase means the prophesied "king" will be gay; that is, he will have no
> regard for the desire of women.  To me, it seems more logical to take it as
> a reference to the Messiah, who was the Desire of Women in the sense that
> young Jewish women wished and hoped that they might become the mother of the
> promised Messiah.

Perhaps this phrase is a reference to one of the decrees of Antiochus as
described in 1 Maccabees:
"[60] And the women who had circumcised their children they put to death
according to the decree, [61] and they hung the babies from their necks ..."
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/1makk.pdf

> Doesn't Haggai 2:7 have a similar Hebrew construction ("desire
> of all nations") as a clear reference to the coming Messiah?

I would take Haggai 2:7's word "xɛmdat" to refer to the city of Jerusalem
if the object of the word "come" and "the elite" if the subject.  I am not 
sure
why this is a reference to the "Messiah" at all, clear or unclear.

Yitzhak Sapir