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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: Yaakov Stein <yaakov_s AT rad.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] collecting myrrh and honey
  • Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:05:52 -0400

Yaakob,

What is in interesting in the story of judges 14 is that the Philistines appear to have spoken good Hebrew. So may be the dictionary's assessment of them:

1. A member of an Aegean people who settled ancient Philistia around the 12th century b.c.
2. A smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values. One who lacks knowledge in a specific area.

is not entirely true.
What appears to be true is that theirs was a culture steeped in brutality, and that Samson was part of it.
The root )RH consist of the sole consonant R, the rest are fillers. So all we can say with certainty about this root is that it means 'loose, free'. Not being a botanist nor a horticulturist it is not clear to me what the king exactly did in "his garden". Did he pluck leaves, did he break tender shoots, did he pick fruits or did he suck sap? I don't know. The same goes for Psalms 80:13.
)RR means 'to curse', but it may also mean 'to undermine', to cause somebody to become M-(UR(AR.
)ARAH DBA$ M-HA-(ARI sounds good to me. For some reason the bible uses the [clearer?] two-consonant root RDH for the extraction of the honey instead of the one-consonant root )RH.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Oct 17, 2007, at 1:14 AM, Yaakov Stein wrote:

Isaac,

Thanks for your enlightening explanations.

I guess the time has come to explain why this word is of interest to me.

My idea has to do with the story in Judges 14 of Samson and
the lion with the honeycomb.

Samson poses a riddle to the Phillistines
from the devourer food comes out, and from the strong sweet emanates
(my translation)
but the riddle is seemingly impossible to figure out.

The classical Jewish commentators claim that Samson expected
his hosts to come and greet them, and thus they should have seen the
lion.
But this is obviously a forced explanation.

I had an idea about this. A riddle should be a play on words that the
average
person could figure out. There should be a single word with more than
one meaning.
In this case the association was triggered by Samson's seeing the lion
and honeycomb.

My idea is that if )RH truly means "to collect a liquid", then possibly
there was a noun )RY meaning "honeycomb" - perhaps along with Y(R -
or more likely some vessel to collect honey.

Assuming this, the play on words is obvious. )RY means both "lion"
and this "collection vessel" or honeycomb. The Phillistines should
have realized that there was a word that meant both "the strong, the
devourer"
and "the sweet, food".

Unfortunately, the Phillistines couldn't figure it out, and had to
plough
with Samsons hepher.

However much I would like to make this riddle reasonable,
I need more evidence ergarding the root )RH before taking this idea
seriously.

Yaakov (J) Stein






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