Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 27 Nov 2009 at 18:03, K Randolph wrote:

> Dave:
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, <dwashbur AT nyx.net> wrote:
>
> > Agreed.  Plus, he's a bit out of date; we now know from Ugaritic
> that the
> > root is XWH, not
> > $XH.
> >
> > XWH is Hebrew for "to declare". Anyway, while the findings at
> Ugarit are
> good for describing the pagan culture of the Iron Age ANE, it is
> only of
> peripheral use for the study of Biblical Hebrew language.

Actually, the biggest problem with the word for "worship" that this guy is 
talking about has
always been the infixed shin and tau, but the very same word in the same root 
appears with
the same meaning in Ugaritic, which would seem to show that there's another 
root XWH that
appears in this "hishtaph`el" stem with the meaning "bow down" etc.  See e.g. 
Holladay's
lexicon and most of the literature on Ugaritic.

Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur