Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> On this day, you will surely die! But, of course, they didn't.

They became liable to die. They lost the eternal life.
Also, if my reading of the Gen2 account at
http://www.vadimcherny.org/judaism/destruction_humanity_drought.htm is
correct, they were expelled in utterly unlivable environment. Such change of
lifestyle could be allegorically described as death.
The turn is also encountered in archaic Russian, 'you will die the death.'

Vadim Cherny
>
>
> > And it can reasonably argued that the
> > same is true of Shimei in 1 Kings 2:36-46. Alter, in his The Five
> > Books of Moses, writes ...
> >
> > > The form of the Hebrew in both instances is what grammarians call
> > > the infinitive absolute: the infinitive immediately followed by a
> > > conjugated form of the same verb. The general effect of this
> > > representation is to add emphasis to the verb, but because in the
> > > case of the verb "to die" it is the pattern regularly used in the
> > > Bible for the issuing of death sentences, "doomed to die" is an
> > > appropriate equivalent.
> >
> > Interestingly, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reads "for in the day that thou
> > eatest thou wilt be guilty of death."
> >
> > What support, if any, can be offered for this rendering? Thanks.
> >
>