Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Karl,

I think I agree with your evaluation of Gen 42.1. 'Looking at each other' has 
to have some kind of loaded meaning that conveys more than simply physically 
looking at each other. But I think that's more a semantic and contextual 
issue than a grammatical encoding of the Hitpael.

With Prov 20.2, HALOT gives the meaning of the Hitpael of (BR [II] as 'to 
show oneself angry, excited, flare up'. The interesting thing here is the 3ms 
suffix on the Hitpael participle. HALOT gives a couple of options for 
understanding this: 'who brings his anger upon himself, or who infuriates him 
(the king)'. The LXX translates it as PAROXYNWN AYTON, suggesting the second 
option from HALOT. I wonder whether it is picturing an action whereby the 
subject is expressing himself a little too forthrightly, thus provoking the 
ire of the king.



Regards,

GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au