Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

The beginning of this discussion was whether or not the various binyanim
signify etymologies (your claim) or inflections (my claim). By focussing
like a laser on one word, you risk dealing with a term that is wrongly
understood, which has the possibility to negate your whole argument.

In the case of NGD נגד we have over 90 examples, about 25%, that do not
follow the spelling for a hiphil. Granted some of them are hophals, but not
all. That is also way too high percentage to attribute them all to copyist
errors. From the numbers alone, that argues against that they are all
hiphils.

As for the definition of the adjective NGD נגד I decided to make a look at
its uses, and as far as 2 Kings, it seems to be restricted to not just
before, rather more in the sense of “in the presence of”, as in “in the
sight and/or hearing of”, immediately in the presence of. The root meaning
then would have a definition similar to “to present into the sight and/or
hearing of”, thus also negating your argument that the hiphil has a
definition that is unexpected from the root meaning.

In contrast, adding a prefixed M- to NGD has the idea of being at a
distance, out of hearing though not necessarily out of sight, e.g.
Deuteronomy 32:52, 2 Kings 3:22, so the idea of being within the hearing of
seems more important than within the sight of.

Therefore, for two reasons, NGD is a bad example to indicate that the hiphil
is an etymology and not an inflection.

So, do you have a single EXPLICIT example pointing to the claim that the
hiphil is an etymology rather than an inflection?

Karl W. Randolph.