Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Yaakov:
Three comments:

1) What do the Dead Sea scrolls have on this verse?

2) When looking at the LXX, those translators indicated that they read it as
saying or some sort of expression.

3) While LQX is the most common root for the expression, grammatically it
could also have come from NQX, QWX, QXH or QXX which was used far more
seldom, but recognized in its time by a different pronunciation. Are there
any indications from cognate languages for these roots? (Isaiah 61:1 has
QWX, is it from the same root?)

Before assuming that there is a wrong letter here, I need more information.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 11:39 PM, Yaakov Stein <yaakov_s AT rad.com> wrote:

> I promised a nice example of a letter most probably being in error.
>
> In Number 16:1 we read  WYQX QRX = Korah took.
> The classical comentaries go on and on about what precisely Korah took.
>
> However, if we look at the next verse we see what his colleagues did.
> WYQMW = they stood up.
>
> So it is most probable that the text was originally WYQM QRX = Korah
> stood up.
>
> It is easy to see how a mem sofit could become a het by the bottom line
> being erased. This could not have occurred during first temple period
> (when the het and mem looked completely different)
> or even during the early second temple period before the sofit forms
> were standardized. On the other hand, I do not know of any text that has
> the mem, so we can even put a rough time frame I when this replacement
> could have happened.
>
> Interested in comments.
>
> Yaakov (J) Stein
>