Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

(I changed the subject line from נגד for those whose browsers may
balk at unicode and produce boxes or equations or chinese)

wyktb krl
> I just looked at the well over one hundred uses of the > term נגד NGD in 
> Tanakh, and found that the basic pre-
> Babylonian Exile use refers to “in the presence of (Ps > 23:5, Proverbs 
> 21:30), laid out as a demonstration in
> the presence of (Genesis 31:32, 37)”, while the
> addition of a prefixed מ- M-indicates “out of the
> presence of, hence at or from a distance (Genesis
> 21:16, Deuteronomy 32:52, Proverbs 14:7)”.
>
> In short, this is not just “before”, but an intimate
> presence where communication takes place, up to and
> including where communication takes place between
> a leader and a crowd of his followers (1 Kings 8:22).

The above is good basic work, with the exception of the
word 'intimate'. 'intimate' is too personal and emotional.
One must distinguish between what a word means and
the contexts where it can be used. See 2Sm 12:12, among
others, where it is public, and in 'deed' not in speech.
(Gn 33:12 'in front' [leading], Ex 10:10 evil/trouble
'before/against', et al.)

> Therefore, a verb from the same root exhibiting a
> meaning derived from the same root would be expected
> to mean something like “to bring into the
> presence of, present, demonstrate, lay out, (when the
> object is speech) to make known (to present, lay out
> using a verbal picture)”.

Even with the soft wording 'would be expected to mean',
the word 'therefore' is an argument from etymology
and the conclusion is unreliable. For examples
where etymology cannot be relied on with prepositions
and verbs, consider bli בלי, approx. 'without' and
the related verb balah בלה, approx. 'wear out'.  Or even
ale- עלי 'on [long/poetic form]' and the related verb `ala עלה
'go up', not 'be upon'. Cf also, `imadi "with me"
versus `amad 'he stood', or aHore- 'behind'/aHare
'after' versus eHar 'to delay', and finally     lifne- לפני
versus pana פנה, which does not mean 'to face, to stand up to,
to go forward', or 'to be early' but 'to turn to' (the 'turning' idea
was not part of the root, the 'early' idea is not part of the verb).
In addition, the proposal *nagad(qal?) adds an idea
'bring' instead of a more stative 'be' or a simple
intransitive 'go/come into the sight of',
without justification.

This extrapolation from 'neged' is an example of what
should not be done, unless a word is extremely
rare and one has no choice but to guess from the meanings
of related words.

> During the Babylonian Exile, there seems to be a
> shift of meaning. Ezekiel 40–42 seems to use it
> in the sense of “opposite, on the other side”
> while Daniel 10:13, 16 even has the idea of “opposing”.

This is also good, in that the 'antagonistic' meaning
of neged definitely strengthened in the later history
of the language. However, I am not sure that you would
be willing to go in this direction since the meaning
that you find in Dan 10.13-16 is also found in
Eccl 4.12 ya`amdu negdo יעמדו מגדו. Of course, you could
date Qohelet to the Second Temple period, but you did
not want to do that last year.

> Many of the uses in Nehemiah seem to be deliberate
> archaizing to pre-Babylonian uses,

This is not reasoned at all. It would first need to be
shown that the sense 'in front of, within sight' was
no longer in use, but Nehemiah itself is evidence that
that meaning was still in use. So it is a case of
assuming a conclusion against the actual evidence.

>Any thoughts?

It's a start, and it is good to see someone working
with the text, though it seems to be unaware of how to
avoid the 'etymological fallacy', how to avoid an
argument from a word's historical background of what
a word is 'supposed to mean' rather than from attested
usage of what it 'actually means'.


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