Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

>>or to put it another way; what was the language of the gov't; of the >>
priests; of the aristocracy; of the peasants on the street; of the middle >>
class; .... of lord& master to the servant in the home? 

fred would give a kingdom (which?) to find out in what language(s) samson
talked with delilah and bil'am with his mule. here i give just one case 
study. 

samson's story is really about semitic puns, mostly easy ones (was he teaching
the philistines basic applied semitic lessons? no, because 
delilah's name is already semitic!). 

but one of the puns i only uncovered reading my arabic dictionary: the story
of the torched foxes. the question is: why did samson choose foxes and not,
say, wolves for his torches? 

clearly, because of their tails!!!

it happens that torch in arabic is sha'le and fox in hebrew is shu'al. 

then, which etymology came first for the root "$(L": torch or wolf? 

a plausible answer is that there is some similarity between the shape of the
torch fire and the fox tail, giving an ancient common semitic word, on which
samson created his jem. 

interestingly, the arabic word for fox is th(lb, which maybe is more ancient,
or maybe just closer to aramaic, considering the th --> sh transformation.
conclusion: fox came before fire? 

in a very long shot, in indo-european can "fox" and "foco/fogo", "zorro" and
"zoroaster" be related in a similar way ? i wouldnt bet fred's kingdom on it. 

nir cohen