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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yorenu (again) in Sanhedrin 105
  • Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:26:29 +1000

Dear Gabe,

Third-person pronominal suffixes augmented with nun are attached to the long prefix verb (the future/imperfective) and not to the short prefix verb (the jussive). Consequently, a jussive rendering like "let his God teach him" is completely out of the question. The word order of subject-verb with the prefix verb is also generally diagnostic of indicative vis-a-vis modal.

Regards,
David Kummerow.



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





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