Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Oun Kwon <kwonbbl AT gmail.com>]

Thanks Bill,

If I may phrase out my original question, it would be like this:

Should I understand it as 'he got heated up' or 'he got angry'. The
immediate context suggests (at least to me) the former. But I got
disappointed to see that most translations choose the latter. Making
it clear, it leaves the question unsolved - If angry, then angry about
what? Is the translation influenced by the preceding word 'bitterness'
- bitter, thus becoming angry? How about taking as 'bitter - then he
got charged to face his task'?

I see two concepts are simply far apart.

Oun Kwon.

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Bill Rea <bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Oun wrote:,_
>
>> I can see that. The problem I have is that these two are not similar at 
>> all.
>>
>> When I read, there is nothing I can spot to help me about its context,
>> though some commentaries say that he was angry about the situation
>> around.
>>
>> But is it true to the context? Is there anything in the text to tell
>> me which fits the context well? (Of course, I have not spent time to
>> read whole chapter and chapter before and after, where I may find it.)
>
> The problem is not that we have words with unclear meaning or thorny
> questions of syntax and grammar but that we have a lack of shared
> experience. This verse comes at the end of Ezekiel's vision and he is
> describing his state during that time. Few people have experienced visions
> so its very difficult for us to grasp how he feels. The more closely literal
> translations have it easier, the word in question can validly be taken as an
> equivalent to the English heat and so they just run with that. They leave
> the job of understanding what it means to the reader. For the dynamic
> equivalence type translations they have a more difficult job. The burden of
> understanding the text is placed more heavily on the translators. There are
> other places in the Hebrew Bible where this word is used and it is used to
> mean anger elsewhere. As you rightly observe, this doesn't necessarily help
> us because the question is -- what is he angry about? Its possible he has
> taken on the anger of God. God is angry with Israel, Ezekiel is being
> appointed a prophet and so is filled with God's anger after the vision. Its
> plausible that is what he means, but that's about as far as we can go. I
> looked at some other translations, one used the word raging. I thought that
> was quite good because raging can take on a meaning that doesn't have
> anything to do with anger, eg a raging fire. So the range of translations
> you see are a reflection of a difficulty in understanding the verse rather
> than the individual words having an unclear meaning like you might get with
> a hapax.
>
> I haven't translated this passage myself but after a short look at it and
> what others have done I would probably stick with heat as my English
> equivalent. It can easily be justified. My second choice would be raging.
> I think translating it as anger, or fury, or rage is too limiting and I
> would not use those words myself.
>
> Bill Rea Ph.D.,