Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

I'm not quite sure what you've said

>>> [RB]
>>> In Judges we can simply read as it is: "rad",
>>> presumably from a root r.d.d. with a meaning similar to y.r.d.
>>> So in Judges we have a rare dialectical word that isn't otherwise used.
>>> But it is attested in the ktiv and MT.
>>
>> [KarlR]
>>I take this as an adjective, not a verb, where the dropping of the initial
>>yod of the root is found in other words as well. There is no need to take
>> it as either dialectal or to invent a new root as a homonym of RDD.
>
> [RB]
>> a. Would you mind listing a few of these yod-less adjectives [or nouns]
>> for us to observe and compare what might be happening? Nothing
>> came to mind that would fit.  `edah and da`at have suffixes added.

[KarlR]
...
>These suffixes you mention here could be examples of such, and not
> because of dropping an initial yod.

[RB]
So where is an example where a root with yod produces an adjective
without a suffix and no yod?
You haven't answered this.
I don't see any precedent for assuming that an "adjective rad" is
from y.r.d.
But we have every morphological reason to suppose that it is
from r.d.d.

[RB]
>> b. I know of no other person who "reads Hebrew" with an adjective "rad".
>> How would you make a plural or feminine of this "word", and how does
>> it sound in your system?
>>

[KarlR]
>One of the first things I learned when I started reading Tanakh is that
>spellings and words often don’t fit in those nice, little boxes that I was
>taught in class. There are exceptions and irregular uses. There seem to be
>more of them when one follows the Masoretic points. Now I go more by feel
>than by system.


[RB]
Again, no answer to a question. What kind of word were you proposing with
*rad being an adjective of y.r.d?
The *rad proposal doesn't strike me as viable. You need to show some
morphological precedent for this specific pattern.
If it is zero, then you should say so, boldly and clearly,
and say that you would like to create a new
dreivative pattern out of your imagination.



> [RB]
>> c. In Hebrew participles are "adjectival"
>> and part of nominal morphology [-im, -ot], but function within the verb.
>> To say that 'rad' is an adjective would not necessarily be saying
>> anything different
>> than that it is a participle, which would fit Judges 19 and r.d.d. nicely.
>> The
>> participle/adjective 'rad' and suffix tense 'rad' both fit and both
>> give almost the
>> same 'meaning' here because of the word order. (cf. dal, daq)
>
> [KarlR]
> I just looked up in a concordance, and there RD is listed as a qal under
> YRD.

[RB]
What concordance does that and why would you accept it?


[KarlR]
> RDD is listed as a verb, with the idea of spreading out, such as gold leaf
> upon carvings, 1 Kings 6:32. Or a shawl upon a woman.

[RB]
'a shawl on a woman'?
from where is this?
We do have a form "roded" Ps 144:2, which is of some help, but we
don't have a form radad anywhere.


>
> >> [RB]
>>>> [PS: out of curiousity I checked Qaddari, Milon to see if he might have
>>>> a note. He pointed out that in Jer 42.10 we have an infinitive "shov".
>>>> In that verse we have the complement shov teshvu instead of
>>>> yashov teshvu. So "hey!", we have two witnesses for a dialectical
>>>> shav yashuv with the meaning 'reside/live'. I will now go with the
>>>> homonym understanding, though I'm leaving the rest of this note
>>>> for completion.]
> >>
> > [KarlR]
>>>This is from the verb “to return”. The people had left their farms and
>>>  towns
>>> and were ready to flee to Egypt. Jeremiah urged the people to return in
>>> the
>>> land to where they came from.
>
>> [RB]
>> but this has the wrong preposition for your reading.
>> If they had left their farms, one would expect 'return to your [farms]'


[KarlR]
>But Jeremiah used the word “land” and the people had not yet left the land.
>They were still in Judea, preparing to leave, and in that preparation they
>had left their farms and villages. So this is a return within the land, not
>unto a land which they had left.

[RB]
Try the verb y.sh.b.  'reside, sit, remain' "in the land". You've brought no
explanation for the preposition, no precedent for such a sense of the
verb with this preposition, and no acknowledgement that all the
ancients read the Hebrew differently from you.




> >> [RB]
>>>> The MT exists, and as this example shows, they preserve things
>>>> that they themselves couldn't explain. It would have been easy,
>>>> both linguistically and theologically to simply vocalize like Ps 27.
>>>> 4 "shivti bevet ha-shem". But they didn't take the easy road,
>>>> fortunately for us.

> >[KarlR]
>>>Before I stopped reading a pointed text, I noticed several examples where
>>>the Masoretes pointed incorrectly as far as meaning is concerned. But
>>>because I was just into reading and not into analysis, I didn’t record
>>> those
>>>examples.
> >
>>> I take this as one example of where it is incorrectly pointed as far as
>>>meaning is concerned. This is a noun with an implied “to be”, making the
>>>Psalm open and close with with implied “to be”.
>
> [RB]
>> you not made sense here. what noun?
>> an infinitive [which is a verbal noun], shabbat, or what?

[KarlR]
>This is an example where the Masoretes got it wrong as far as meaning is
>concerned. I read this as a shegolate noun. Context and syntax lead me to
>that conclusion.

(RB) PS: a "shegolate noun [sic]" would be a profanity, I assume that you
mean 'segolate'?

[RB]
But you haven't stated what the word actually IS. Just what word are
you claiming is correct, and what word are you claiming that the
Masoretes got wrong?

This is ironic, because the Masoretic pointing would fit a segolate pattern.
[weshavti] could be from a segolate *a- noun, except that the one noun that
exists in the language was built on an *i- vowel, not the *a- of the MT in
this verse.

[KarlR]
>In reading the text, when we come across $BT שבת, are we dealing with a
>derivative of Y$B, the verb or noun $BT, or a derivative from $WB? Context.
>Examples from Y$B include Jeremiah 9:5, Amos 6:3, and the concordance lists
>a few more, but I find some of them questionable.

[RB]
Your doubts are duly recorded: apparently some unnamed concordance
does a less than commendable job, and apparently the MT has let you
down in some unexplained way,
but it still isn't clear what you're referring to at Ps 23:6.


[KarlR]
>As for pronunciation, my guess is that it may have been SeBeTe (the written
>consonants in capitals, the proposed vowels in minuscule). Or with the
>suffix as in this verse as SeBeTiYa. In both cases, the final syllable
>unstressed, almost to the point of not being there.

[RB]
I assume that you intended "$" for "S" in the paragraph above. (Otherwise
you've just made Hebrew "sh" sound like Arabic 's', though their phonologies
do have a long and different history.)

So it appears that you are arguing for a new word *shebete that is not the
infinitive from y.sh.b. ?

And why is this better than whatever is Masoretic?





-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
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