Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<pporta AT oham.net>]

Isaac,

thank you for your explanation.
Unfortunately, my level is not high enough to understand what you mean.
(And I wonder if anyone on this list does understand it... since nobody, 
nobody mails to the list anything on this issue...)
I think you have a hard work to do if you want people understand what you 
mean.

So, I'd say:

1. It will be better we leave this issue as it is...
2. And finally: try, if possible, to explain what is the equivalence of 
XALAH, be sick, and GALAH, uncover.

Pere Porta
Barcelona

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Isaac Fried" <if AT math.bu.edu>
To: <pporta AT oham.net>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 7:35 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The root SLH


Pere,

Of course we all “know” [more or less] what XALAH means by context and
universal experience, yet you did not tell me what it means. Unfortunately,
all you give me is translation --- the replacement of one vague word in
Hebrew by two ambiguous and doubtful words in English. Without precise
knowledge, you will agree with me, there can be no meaningful discussion of
the semantic affinity of GALAH and XALAH. We need to understand, or try to
understand, what the ancient Hebrews concretely meant by saying that someone
is XOLEH. To see more on the equivalence of GLL, HLL, XLL, KLL, QLL see my
posting from September 6, 2007.

What I mean by the ‘equivalence’ of D, Z, T, Y, S, C, $, T is that they are
all ‘essentially equal’. If you replace in a Hebrew root, say, D by, say, C,
then you get a new root of the same “family”, or same basic meaning as the
original. Since we are not dealing here with sharp and clearly delineated
mathematical objects the meaning of ‘equal’, ‘close’, ‘same’ [imagine my
dillema facing students who keep pestering me with the question if the test
is going to be THE SAME as the homeworks], and so on, must be understood in
the more general sense of what we agree and understand to be so.

Examples do it all. Take for example 1 Kings 5:22-23

וַיִּשְׁלַח חִירָם, אֶל-שְׁלֹמֹה לֵאמֹר שָׁמַעְתִּי אֵת אֲשֶׁר-שָׁלַחְתָּ
אֵלָי אֲנִי אֶעֱשֶׂה אֶת-כָּל-חֶפְצְךָ בַּעֲצֵי אֲרָזִים וּבַעֲצֵי
בְרוֹשִׁים עֲבָדַי יֹרִדוּ מִן-הַלְּבָנוֹן יָמָּה וַאֲנִי אֲשִׂימֵם
דֹּבְרוֹת בַּיָּם עַד-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר-תִּשְׁלַח אֵלַי וְנִפַּצְתִּים שָׁם
וְאַתָּה תִשָּׂא

How did the ancient Hebrews know what the rare word DOBR-AH means, even if
they had possibly never heard it before? First, King Solomon was a wise and
practical man [as are we] who understood the logistics of transporting
several hundred large tree trunks from the cedar forests of the Lebanon to
Jerusalem, and would have done the same inventive and sensible thing Xiram
proposed to do. But he had also a keen, discerning, and sensitive ear, not
spoiled yet by dictionaries and the like, to the language and could
understand right away the choice of this technical word DOBRA-AH. His
intuition told him within a microsecond of the equivalence of

DOBRA-AH, ZOBRA-AH, TOBRA-AH, YOBRA-AH, SOBRA-AH, COBRA-AH, $OBRA-AH,
TOBRA-AH

Then his mind picked out TOBRA-AH, [recall TABUR of Judges 9:37], COBRA-AH
[recall CIBUR, ‘heap’ of 2 Kings 10:8], $OBR-AH [recall the two SEBER of
Isaiah 30:14 and Genesis 42:1], TOBR-AH [recall the mountain name TABOR of
Psalms 89:13], and he got it right away that DOBRA-AH is a pile, or a
collection, or an assembly, [COBRA-AH CBUR-AH or TOBR-AH TBUR-AH or $OBR-AH
$BUR-AH] of floating tree trunks, certainly bound together by ropes.

Isaac Fried, Boston University



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <pporta AT oham.net>
To: "Isaac Fried" <if AT math.bu.edu>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 7:38 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The root SLH


> Pere,
> I will give you a detailed answer, but first explain to me (no traslations
> and no converses please!) what you think XALAH, 'ill', means.
>
> __________
>
> We should study in detail the 75 issues in the Bible where verb XALAH 
> appears (in all forms and conjugations).
> But taking as a model 1K 17:17, where a boy XALAH and ... died, I think 
> XALAH means (in qal) "to be weak, sick", as we read in dictionaries.
> Now, I think all of us know (either in theory or in practice) what "to be 
> weak, sick" means: so no need of explanations on this...
>
> Pere Porta