Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On Nov 26, 2007 8:07 PM, kenneth greifer wrote:
>
> Proverbs 16:27 says something like "an evil man digs up (plots?) evil,
> and it burns like a fire on his lips." (I am not sure about that 
> translation.)
>
> If you divide the letters differently it could say "a man of evil is the 
> furnace
> (kaf vav resh spelled kaf resh) of evil (hay resh ayin hay), and upon his 
> lips
> it (evil?) burns like a fire." It is a wild guess, but as a coincidence, I 
> think it is interesting.

Well, now you've really done it!

I mean, it does work.  It's not original, but when you begin to consider
independently ideas that great scholars suggested before, it shows you're
on the right track.

What makes your idea attractive is that it takes what seems like it has no
parallelism and reads a clear parallelism into it (ie, oven vs. fire).  This 
is
true no matter what burns.  The last two words can be read, '[it is] like a
burning fire', and it would relate to k(w)r, which makes more sense in my
opinion.  It is more likely that 'it' would refer to the first part of
the construct
chain.

HALOT has a comment Pr 16:27 rd kwr 'oven' (Gemser)

It has for Gemser:
De beteekenis der persoonsnamen voor onze kennis van het leven en denken der
  oude Babyloniërs en Assyriërs, Wageningen 1924
Spr. Sprüche Salomos, Handbuch zum Alten Testament, Tübingen, 1/16 1937
  (second ed, 1963
see also Spreuken 1 (1929) 19

Yitzhak Sapir