Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

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
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