Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Joseph:

I am curious about a couple of your definitions.

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Joseph Justiss <jljustiss AT msn.com> wrote:

>
> The question that has to be asked is how are these words used in the Hebrew
> Bible. From what I can tell the meaning would be something like "an
> unihabitable wilderness", i.e. a place hostile to human life.


Would you include war as a reason for making a place “hostile to human
life”? Isaiah 24:10 and 34:11 both indicate places that are uninhabited
because of war. Otherwise those areas are human habitable.


> Another issue is whether the word for "earth" here really refers to the
> whole planet. The way eretz is used in the Pentateuch suggests tht a
> specific piece of land is in view which God is preparing for human life. A
> better Hebrew word for the whole planet would be tebal.


תבל TBL is almost exclusively used in poetry. Genesis 1 is prose.

ארץ )RC is used in contrast to heavens in Genesis 1:1, 2:4 (opening and
closing verses of the narration), in contrast to waters Genesis 1:10, to a
specific place when connected with a name and/or context; in short, it has a
wide semantic range, wider than any equivalent English word. One of its uses
is to refer to the whole world.

Where do you get the idea that it refers to a specific piece of land which
God is preparing for human habitation?

Karl W. Randolph.