Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Randall:

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:22 PM, Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

>
> OK.
> I hear you affirming that *netsol (qal inf.)
> means 'to take away'.
>
>
> > But don’t expect this to map cleanly onto English, after all,
> > we’re discussing Biblical Hebrew here.
>
>
> But of course, BH. At least I would hope so.
> And since you just said that
>
> > conjugate ... hiphil and hophal for causative,
>
>
> I hear you saying that the verb hatsil,
> as an active causative to the passive causative hof`al,
> would be broadly in the range of meaning:
>    'to cause someone/something to take away   '.
>
> Would you like to fix that up, refine it a bit?
>

Not now.

>
> And do you believe that that is what hatsil means in BH?
>
>
> To move the thread along a bit, I will add what I think.
> Personally, I don't think that the definition that
> you took from your concordance and applied to a qal
> can have a causative plug-in added to it and still
> be justified for hatsil.
>
> "to take away",
> but misses the mark for a qal *netsol
> to about the degree that 'come' and 'bring' are different.
> In other words, it would be like applying the meaning 'bring'
> to the qal בוא bo'.
>
> I happen to think that it is hatsil that means
> 'to take away . . .', not *netsol.
> Imagine that
> -- hatsil means 'to take away . . ., not *netsol.
>

I disagree, and at this time see no point to arguing about it. At this point
I think the proper response is to agree to disagree, and let this drop.

>
> *netsol, should it have existed -- but it hasn't been
> attested during the whole 3000+ history of the language,
> would have meant something in the neighborhood of
> 'to be safe'.
> However, this is one of those 'middle' verbs that appears
> to be used as a nif`al as
> 'to get away safe, escape, get saved'.
> nitsal (nif`al) is a synonym of nimlat,
> (also a nif`al orphan without any *malaT).
>
> Anyway, "to take to a safe place, to deliver, to rescue"
>  is how I read le-hatsil,
> including
> hitsil, wayyatsel, wayyatsilehu, yatsil, yatsilehu, etc.
> I don't deny that it has a causative etymology. I am
> merely pointing out that one should not take the meaning
> of a hif`il verb and attribute that 'hif`il meaning' to a qal.
>

I have made it very clear practically from day one that I consider the
different binyanim to be conjugations that add meaning to the verbs. I look
at the actions that the verbs code for. Sometimes making a literal
translation of the Hebrew makes for very awkward Englsih—but…hey!̦—this is
an exercise in Hebrew, not translation.

As far as I can tell, you think according to modern Hebrew, where each
binyan for each verb is a separate dictionary entry. After all, you know
modern Hebrew better than you know Biblical Hebrew. And as is typical in
dealing with close cognate languages, modern Hebrew has corrupted your
understanding of Biblical Hebrew, and Biblical Hebrew to a lesser degree,
has corrupted your use of modern Hebrew. (The same way my learning German
and Norwegian have affected the way I speak my mother tongue English.)

No, it would not be worth the time and effort to continue this discussion,
as it will mostly be talking past each other, not communicating.

>
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>

Karl W. Randolph.