Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Karyn:

There’s more than one way to skin the cat.

I definitely disagree with Dr. Buth on three points:

1) I have found that the Masoretic points are not trustworthy. While
the vast majority are correct as far as meaning is concerned, enough
are demonstrably wrong as far as meaning as to call into question
anytime we run into something that seems out of character. (For
purposes of argumentation, I did not make a catalog of where the
points are wrong, and I normally read the text unpointed.) As such, an
unusual pointing such as this example may mean nothing special other
than that this was the way the word was pronounce according to their
tradition at that time.

2) I view the binyanim as grammaticalizations of meaning appended to
the actions referred to by the verbs. In this case, the hiphil is the
causative applied to the action of resting, not being active.

3) A third, lesser area, we do not know what was the pronunciation of
Biblical Hebrew when it was spoken, namely before the Babylonian
Exile. Hence any attempt to have conversational Biblical Hebrew is an
artificial construct, most likely to be incorrect.

In this example in Genesis, Simeon was caused to cool his heels in
Egypt while his brothers hot-footed back to Canaan with food for their
families.

As for your other questions below, the answer may be no more
significant than tradition.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Karyn
Traphagen<karyn AT birchbarkstudio.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 26, 2009, at 3:23 PM, Randall Buth wrote:
>
>> Hebrew developed two Hif`il verbs using the root n.v.H.
>>
>
> Yes, but can we say how they developed? We see the A and B entries (in
> BDB) for n.w.H. but we want to know why one has the different
> pointing. Does this point (no pun intended) to a divergence from a
> single root or is it possibly a merger of two roots that did not
> extend to the hiphil? Or is the dagesh simply to distinguish between
> the two meanings of the root. If so, do we have another example?
>
> In other words, how do we account for the short vowel and dagesh? All
> other similar verbs (hiphil, imperative, mp of middle weak verbs) have
> the long vowel and no dagesh.
>
> Karyn
>
> Karyn Traphagen
> Doctoral Student
> Stellenbosch University