Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yigal:

On 4/9/07, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:
> Dear Steve,
>
> I'm not sure if I'll manage to answer your questions, but Karl has already
> addressed them. As he wrote, in a sequence such as "Judah, Israel and
> Jerusalem", there is no need to insert "and" between every item. My
> additional question would be - to what "Israel" is the author referring?
> Presumably, Zechariah lived in Persian-period Judah. There was no "Israel".
> He could have been using "Israel" to mean Judah, but the "Judah" is
> redundant.
I understand it to mean that those who were attacking, were attacking
not only the land and its inhabitants, but also the people scattered
throughout the empire. Yes, this was Persian Empire period, but
"Israel", the so-called "Ten Lost Tribes", were not lost, just living
in exile, and being attacked as well.

An aside, I read a book several years ago that claimed, among others,
that the reason Russian uses the word "Yevrei" instead of "Zhid" to
refer to "Jews" is because there are many, particularly around the
Caspian Sea area, who trace their ancestry back to Israel, not Judea,
though by oral tradition.

Another aside, I have learned to trust oral tradition, in a surprising
way in my own family. My great-great-grandfather sold an estate that
measured in square miles, not hectares, in what is now Sweden. Oral
tradition mentioned that that estate had originally been the country
estate of a Norwegian king, who gave the kingdom to one son, but the
country estate to another, our ancestor. At the time I was told this
tradition, neither the king's nor the son's name was mentioned. The
relatives who told the tradition said they could find no historical
reference, but that they were looking between 1100 to 1400 AD.
Recently I came across a historical aside that that actually happened,
the king's name was Harold who died in 933 AD, but the son's name was
not listed. Given the practice of inheritance that lasted throughout
the medieval period, the probability that I am a direct descendant of
Harold is over 90%. But I would still like a list of the names.
Notice, I heard the oral tradition many years ago, only recently found
a historical reference that backs it up.

So to get back to subject, I think the oral tradition among the
"Yevrei" is largely true. And in this verse "Israel" refers to Israel
in exile.
> As far as "yadu", the verb is not the same as the one that means "praise",
> "give thanks", or "confess". Like in Jer. 50:14 and Lam. 3:53, it means "to
> throw". It seems to be derived from "yad", "hand", literally "to hand"
> (although not meaning, as in English, "to give").
This is what I call an example of "sloppy lexicography", which is not
really accurate nor fair, as it reflects more a different methodology
than sloppiness. Rather what we see is a different dynamic range of
the Hebrew verb than what is recognized in modern, western "semantic
domains" where the same action is done in both cases.

The closest equivalent in English that I can think of in this case is
the compound lexeme "throw out" which refers not only to physical
objects like dice, but also teachings, ideas, words. But even here it
is not exact.

> Yigal Levin
Karl W. Randolph.