Biblical Hebrew Forum

[ben.crick AT argonet.co.uk (Ben Crick)]

On Wed 21 Mar 2007 (16:38:31), brocine AT twcny.rr.com wrote:
> What do you think it means?  Do you suppose it might mean "for a 
> faithful (or sincere) person"?

 Le`e:MeT = "in truth" or "truly"; in an adverbial sense.
 The Servant will be faithful to his role; which is to bring forth
 Mi$:Pa+ to the Gentiles. Mi$:Pa+ is not necessarily condemnation;
 it is a revelation of what YHWH considers to be right. It is the
 "verdict" rather than the "sentence"; and it will be "true to the
 facts".

 Vv 2-3 seem to be rather negative; it says what the Servant will
 not do, rather than what he will do. But this is a Litotes - denying
 the opposite in order to assert the positive. He will not rant and
 shout in the streets like a noisy demagogue. He has not come to
 threaten, but to encourage.

 V 4 continues: he will not "fizzle out" or "retire hurt" (be bruised
 off; taking YaRuC from root RCC to bruise (by parallelism) until he
 has finished his task of bringing YHWH's Revelation to the whole
 earth. uW for oW appears in Proverbs 29:6 (YaRuWN) and Psalm 91:6
 (Ya$uWD). RCC means to bruise transitively; but Delitzsch points
 out that it is used intransitively in Ecclesiastes 12:6.

 My $0.02

 Ben
-- 
 Revd Ben Crick, BA CF                                       ZFC Ta
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