Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 1:07 PM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
> 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.
>

The problem with cognate languages is that they are cognate languages. Just
because some languages had one and the others the other does not mean that
the sounds were interchangeable.

>
> 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)".
>

While it is a possibility that there is a typo (copyist error) in this
verse, it also reads correctly as written, i.e. referring to widows. Look at
the conjugation of the verbs in the section, this is not a continuation of
the previous verses, even though it appears to be so. Hence, Gesenius is
wrong (not surprising).

>
> (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."


Wrong again. Making unknown is used to indicate things, including physical
objects, out of sight.


>  At p. 483.  Here,
> the snow is "heaped up",


This is poetic, and heaped up is not a necessary reading of the verse.


> rather than the snow being "unaware" of some "
> situation", or someone being "unaware" of the "situation" regarding the
> snow.


Snow is the subject of the verb, covering that which is underneath. You
misread the text (sorry, you don't read Hebrew).


> (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.
>

MRC is a correct reading of the word, no need to speculate about a typo
here.

>
> …
> These examples show that even within the Bible itself, resh/R and lamed/L
> are
> sometimes interchangeable.
>

Not one of your examples stands up as a necessary reading of the verses,
hence this supposed interchange between lamedh and resh is highly
speculative at best.

>
>
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>

Karl W. Randolph.