Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

On the other hand, there could have been a mental image of God's nose
becoming hot with anger, and if he had a long nose, he would be slower to
anger. Some have postulated that this goes back to the Canaanite image of El
or Baal as a bull or calf, which was not totally eliminated from the
biblical text.

Yigal Levin

p.s. And a happy Passover and Easter to all.

-----Original Message-----
>
> . he claims that the Hbrew words "slow to anger" originally means "long of
> nose."
>
>
> >From Andrew Pike
>
>
That is a  common teaching, and that is what I was taught in class as well.
However, is it true? Or are they two different words, with different
etymologies, that happened to converge in form?

Presently both "nose" and "anger" are spelled and pronounced the same. But
was that always true? We don't know. The vowels were not preserved in
Biblical Hebrew. And by the time of the Masoretes, a shift in pronunciation
could have caused both words to be pronounced the same.

Personally I am of the opinion that they were originally two separate words,
that converged in form, just like the English word "too" (to, too, two).

Karl W. Randolph.
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