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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: klriley AT alphalink.com.au, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] XBR vs. ubburu: Hebron
  • Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:46:07 EST


Kevin Riley:
You wrote: “Where is the evidence that L and R interchange within West
Semitic?”
I think you must have missed item #2 of my prior post. I will set it forth
again. If I’m wrong about this, please let me know, because it’s very
important to my theory of the case.
“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.”

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




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