Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 3:29 PM,  Jim Stinehart wrote:

> 2.  I see the above analysis as being supported by Yitzhak Sapir's comment:
>
> "Moshe Held's article in Erets Israel 16, p. 78-79 with notes (Hebrew), to
> which Victor Hurowitz referred me, makes the conclusion that xbr derives 
> from
> the semitic root of x.br "to bind by magical force" and which appears in
> Akkadian as ubburu, rather than x_br "to make a lot of noise" which appears 
> in
> Akkadian as xabaru."
>
> Note that presence or absence of an initial heth/X is not considered 
> critical
> here.  The XBR in Hebrew that means "to bind by magical force", which starts
> with heth/X, is linked to ubburu in Akkadian, which starts with a mere 
> vowel,
> not a heth/X.  Meanwhile, a possible Akkadian link that starts with heth/X,
> namely xabaru, is rejected in analyzing the XBR in Hebrew that means "to 
> bind
> by magical force".  The point is that an initial heth/X may in some cases 
> be a
> much less significant letter than is generally realized.  Thus the initial
> heth/X in Aramaic XQR) is a mere prefix, not part of the root.

Hello Jim,

I am trying to be as nice as possible here :)  So, no offense, but you
are taking
what I say and twisting it, then twisting it some more, and in the
end, nothing is
left of what I originally meant except your statement that says the
exact opposite.
What the above says is that of two Semitic gutturals that coalesced in 
Tiberian
Het, xabaru is to be related to one (a kh sound the way Ashkenazi het is
pronounced, and the way kaf is pronounced post-vocalically), and ubburu is
related to the other (similar to h, the way Oriental het is pronounced).  The
Hebrew word xbr, meaning to bind by magical force, has the second type of
het, and is not related to the root with the first type of het.  That
the first type
of het, which had a sound closer to h, dropped in Akkadian does not mean
it can be ignored, nor does it mean it can be confused with the other type of
het or with any other letter.  Neither type of het dropped in Hebrew or 
Aramaic,
at least not during Biblical times.

Yitzhak Sapir