Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>]

Thanks much to Harold, Yigal, Yitzhak and Isaac for all the help. The 
"nun energicum" is what I was missing.

It had seemed to me that the Sanhedrin passage is playing off this nun 
in order to change "teach him" (in /Isaiah/) into "teach us" ("us" being 
the Israelites who answer "the prophet" in Rabbah b. bar Hana's 
parable). This was the Soncino reading; but the Schottenstein 
translation has "teach IT" (the yetzer hara' in the parable) -- and, 
appropriately as per Yitzhak's information, puts a dagesh in the nun of 
the Talmudic text as well. (I am assuming that the dagesh's are later 
additions to the Talmudic text as well as the Biblical, so that Soncino 
and Schottenstein can decide where to put their dagesh's in the Talmud. 
Correct? Or is there an "official" Masoretic Talmud?)

But what both translations agree on is to say "LET his God teach 
[him/us]" rather than simply, "His God will teach [him/us]". This fits 
in with a reading of the passage that takes the Israelites as being 
defiant or rebellious, and thus resisting the teaching, or at least 
taking no responsibility for controlling themselves. What interests me 
is an alternative reading, in which the Israelites would be saying, in a 
more positive manner, "His God WILL teach us." So what I want to know 
is, is there any grammatical basis for deciding this? If you set out to 
translate the two English sentences ("Let him teach us", "He will teach 
us") into (Biblical) Hebrew, what would you come up with to distinguish 
them?

thanks again,
Gabe Eisenstein