Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Peter Bekins: 
 
You quoted me as saying:  “No distinction at all between those 2 
letters/sounds is made on the Thutmosis III list”, and then you wrote:  “How 
exactly do 
you expect them to distinguish between r/l?”
 
That is an important issue for me.
 
1.  Thutmosis III List
 
In the sentence of mine that you quoted, I explicitly stated that on the 
mid-15th century BCE Thutmosis III list, the Egyptian scribes wrote down 
Egyptian 
R for either west Semitic lamed/L or west Semitic resh/R.  There is no 
distinction at all between R and L on the Tuthmosis III list.  I don’t see 
how anyone 
could have been confused about that.  That’s exactly what I said.
 
Yet later, Egyptians sometimes referenced an L.  Here is how Kelley L. Ross, 
Ph.D., explains this phenomenon: 
“Usually Egyptians just pronounced foreign l's as r's. When Greek names, like 
"Ptolemaios" or "Kleopatra," were later transcribed, the biliteral sign rw 
was used for "l".”
 
To me, that suggests that in the Late Bronze Age, the Egyptians could not 
distinguish between west Semitic lamed/L or west Semitic resh/R, because the 
sounds were so very similar in the Late Bronze Age.  Note that the Thutmosis 
III 
list consistently distinguishes qof/Q vs. kaf/K, and also distinguishes 
between 
two different kinds of Semitic heths, so I don’t see general sloppiness as 
being the issue here.
 
Since the language of the Canaanites and early Hebrews was to such a great 
extent oral, it seems logical to me that Semitic words that are only 
distinguished in writing by resh/R vs. lamed/L could easily have been viewed 
by the early 
Hebrews, and by other west Semitic speakers in Canaan in the Late Bronze Age, 
as being related, if not being the same word.
 
If people were confused about the failure of Egyptians to distinguish resh/R 
from lamed/L, then perhaps people did not understand the important issue 
regarding KRR at item #80 on the Thutmosis III list.  I view KRR as being 
both (i) 
GRR, which is “Garar”/GRR in the Patriarchal narratives, and (ii) 
Galilee/GLYL.  Many scholars (including our own Yigal Levin) see KRR as being 
Galilee.  
But to the best of my knowledge, no scholar has ever considered whether GRR/“
Garar” in the Patriarchal narratives may be KRR, and hence be “Galilee”.  An 
Egyptian R could be either resh/R or lamed/L.
 
On that basis, BR may be a linguistic equivalent of Canaanite )BL in the Late 
Bronze Age [if the aleph/) in )BL is a prosthetic aleph], with the identical 
meaning:  “open pastureland/meadow”.  Each of XBL and XBR may be related to 
these words as well, since the sounds are similar.  And if the northern 
Hebrews 
pronounced and spelled XBL as )BL (which seems possible, though is not 
confirmed by HALOT), then that looks a lot like the Canaanite )BL.
 
2.  Within Biblical Hebrew
 
A resh/R in the Bronze Age sometimes softened to a lamed/L by the Late Bronze 
Age or the Iron Age.  Also, in the Bronze Age and Iron Age some dialects may 
have said resh/R while other dialects said lamed/L, and vice versa, even 
though they were the same words.  
 
Even within the Bible itself, there is sometimes a de facto 
interchangeability of resh/R and lamed/L, reflecting that phenomenon.  
 
(a)  In connection with Isaiah 13: 22, Gesenius remarks:  “the letter resh 
[R] being softened into lamed [L] as is frequently the case.”  The most 
famous 
Biblical example of this phenomenon is Isaiah 13: 22, where the two 
underlying 
basic words, one spelled with a lamed/L and one spelled with a resh/R, are as 
follows:  aleph-lamed-mem-nun/aLman = forsaken;  aleph-resh-mem-vav-nun/aRman 
= palace.  At Isaiah 13: 22, we see a feminine plural form, spelled with a 
lamed/L:  aleph-lamed-mem-nun-vav-tav.  But although the lamed/L would 
normally 
indicate “forsaken”, here this word is often taken to mean “palaces”, as if 
the second letter was resh/R.  Or possibly there is a double meaning here, so 
that the word in context means “forsaken palaces”.  Gesenius further notes in 
this context:  “i.q. aleph-resh-mem-nun-tav (which is itself the reading of 
some copies)”.  
 
(b)  Four more examples like this, with lamed/L being interchangeable with 
resh/R in Biblical Hebrew in certain contexts, are set forth by Aloysius 
Fitzgerald in “The Interchange of L, N, and R in Biblical Hebrew”, in Journal 
of 
Biblical Literature, Vol. 97, No. 4 (Dec, 1978), pp. 481-488.  
 
(i)  At Job 6: 15-17, “understand… ayin-lm here as a dialectal form of 
ayin-rm”.  At p. 483.  Ayin-resh-mem means “heaped”.  Ayin-lamed-resh, by 
contrast, “denotes ‘hidden from the mind so that one is unaware of, 
unconcerned about 
an idea, activities, a situation or the like.’  The verb is never used of a 
physical thing being hidden from the eyes of a beholder.”  At p. 483.  Here, 
the snow is “heaped up”, rather than the snow being “unaware” of some “
situation”, or someone being “unaware” of the “situation” regarding the snow. 
 This 
is not a “mistake” in the text, but rather the poet is deliberately using 
ayin-lm as a dialectal form of ayin-rm.  “The poet used this dialectal form 
because it fit the alliterative pattern of the colon l,l,l, which answers the 
q,r,q,r pattern of the first colon.”  At p. 485.  
 
(ii)  “The second instance, confirmatory of the first, of this interchange 
[of lamed/L with resh/R] in Job 6 is found in v 25:  …Here nmrsw = nmlsw….”  
At 
p. 485.  
 
(iii)  At Psalms 37: 34b-35, “mt-ayin-rh [should be] understood as dialectal 
mt-ayin-lh.”  At p. 486.  
 
(iv)  “There may be another instance of r for l in the same verse, once again 
for the sake of alliteration.  …Ayin-rys = ayin-lys in Ps 37: 35….”  At p. 
486.  
 
The scholarly explanation of Aloysius Fitzgerald of this phenomenon of resh/R 
and lamed/L sometimes being interchangeable in Biblical Hebrew is as follows. 
 Regarding an interchange of resh/R and lamed/L in Biblical Hebrew, this is 
an “interchange of consonants in poetic texts….  [W]hat the poet is doing is 
using a dialectal form that fits better the sound-patterning of his line.”  
At 
p. 481.  This analysis of “using a dialectal form” presupposes that some west 
Semitic speakers used a resh/R, where other west Semitic speakers used a 
lamed/L for the same word.  
 
These examples show that even within the Bible itself, resh/R and lamed/L are 
sometimes interchangeable.
 
3.  XBL vs. XBR
 
I realize that XBL and XBR have different Akkadian cognates.  Accordingly, to 
a linguist, they are very different words.  But when one looks at the 
meanings of these words, both as verbs and nouns, in the Bible, one finds 
that the 
meanings are intertwined.  One reason for that is that to the early Hebrews, 
XBL 
and XBR may have sounded almost the same.  That may be why XBR and XBL are 
closer in meaning in Biblical Hebrew than are their separate Akkadian 
roots/cognates.
 
Indeed, it is notable that whereas XBL is very frequently used in most of the 
Bible, there is no XBL in the Patriarchal narratives.  There is only XBR.  In 
fact, XBL as a noun is fairly rare in the first 5 books of the Bible 
(appearing only in two chapters of Deuteronomy), though XBL as a noun is very 
common 
in the rest of the Bible.  One must wonder whether at one time XBR was an 
alternative form of, or an earlier version of, XBL.
 
Note that XBR as a noun is spelled )BR [aleph-abar] in the Samaritan 
Pentateuch at M22.
 
4.  XBRWN/XBRN/)BRN
 
If resh/R and lamed/L were not consistently distinguished by sound in the 
Late Bronze Age, then the XBR in XBRN [or the )BR in the )BRN of the 
Samaritan 
Pentateuch] may be reflecting not only XBR and BR, but also XBL and )BL.
 
In my view, the author of the Patriarchal narratives created the proper name 
XBRWN/XBRN/)BRN/“Hebron”.  He did not passively record the name of the 
mountainous city of Hebron 20 miles of south of Jerusalem, as is usually 
thought.  
If the Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives created the geographical 
place name XBRWN/XBRN/)BRN, then it makes sense that he is deliberately 
referencing not only XBR, but also BR, and with resh/R and lamed/L not always 
being 
consistently distinguished, XBL and )BL as well.  Several of those words 
often 
mean “open pastureland/meadow”.  I see a reference to “open 
pastureland/meadow”
 as being a key ingredient of the proper name XBRWN/XBRN/)BRN/“Hebron” that 
the author of the Patriarchal narratives created.
 
In my view, XBRWN/XBRN/)BRN/“Hebron” is “the open pastureland place”, being 
the Aijalon Valley, which is the logical place for a classic pastoralist like 
Abraham to sojourn in southern Canaan. 
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

**************Need a job? Find an employment agency near you. 
(http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000003)