Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>* Hello,
*>*
*>*
*>* I've got
*>* one question. In the word "hevenu" (from "Hevenu shalom
*>* aleichem"), what is the root of the verb? Is it the verb
*>* "bo" (to come) in hiphil? If not, what is the root? Many thanks in advance
*>* to those who can help me.
*
Well, Sébastien, you've been treated to a pretty wide list of
explanations, some on target, some imaginative, and some just
wrong.

George and Pere were basically on target in explaining hevenu
(הבאנו) as the verb le-havi' "to bring", hifil of a root ב.ו.א
"b.w.'" Between "caused to come" and "have brought"-- "have brought"
is the closer nuance in English, since "caused to come" puts more
attention on causation than the Hebrew.
On explanation of forms:
>* yes, prefix "hi" is, so to say, the usual form of the hiphil prefix
*>* for
*>* "normal" verbs. ...
*>* --1. With verbs of first guttural, the prefix is "he" (vowel
*>* segol)
*Pere could have added that verbs from a hollow root (middle 'w' or
'y') have a tsere "e" in the first syllable. Of course, the subject
of the verb is 1pl "we", and it is the "suffix conjugation" (a.k.a.
past, perfect, definite).
Although the sentence is found in a well-known modern song,
there is nothing that would have prevented
the sentence from occurring in a text in the BH era.


> This form starts with the attached personal pronoun (identity
> marker, alias) HI- for the performer of the act, and includes
> the internal personal pronoun -I- (short for HI) for the
> target of the act.
This explanation referring to 'h' as a subject pronoun and 'i' as
an object pronoun would not refer to the meaning of the verb as
it is used, but to an imaginative etymology of how the form
developed into Hebrew. My impression (for what it is worth
and it may be quite offbase) is that Isaac loves to play a
game with real, communicative Hebrew, and to see how abstractly
he can describe any word or root. While interesting, it is not
usually checked for consistency, applicability, or how it lines
up or doesn't line up with other data in the history of the
Semitic languages.

Finally,
> My understanding (I have not seen it in Hebrew) is that this is
> from the irregularly conjugated verb YHB, which in Biblical
> Hebrew meant to hand over, deliver. I understand this as
> possibly a qal imperative first person plural, which would
> have the emphasis “Let us deliver…”, but seeing as this
> is modern, not Biblical, Hebrew, I am not sure.
This is no Hebrew, neither biblical nor anything later. First
person imperatives of the type "let us [verb]" use the prefix
'n'. Nor can the root y.h.b. explain the form. The imperative
of this verb is used in BH as 'hab/hava/havi/habu' "give".
(This verb, too, is used in a very well-known modern song,
hava nagila "hey-c'mon, let's rejoice!".) And when
haba is used in this idiomatic sense in BH it does not use the
preposition `al 'on/upon' nor does it add an indirect-object
suffix. So the suggestion was without any merit.

If the sentence were to be found in an ancient Hebrew text it
would be spelled הבאנו שלום עליכם according to BH norms.
It is well-formed BH.
"We've brought you peace".
It is possible that some dialect may have said
habi'onu shalom `alekem, הביאונו שלום עליכם,
but that is not normative BH, where the forms without an object
suffix prefer the 'shortened' hebeta/hebeti/hebenu.

THat should complete this topic.

When "shalom" is used as a greeting, the BH preposition is le-
and not the later Arabic `al-.

braxot
shalom leka
Randall Buth*
*



-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
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