Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>>As an example, if a student asked permission from a
teacher to leave a class, would they use אצאה/אעזבה נא, or הבה לי
לעזוב/לצאת, or תן לי לעזוב/לצאת, or הניחה לי לעזוב/צאת, or הרשני לצאת, or
what?”
>can you give any Biblical examples of any of those?

That was my question, the list is intended to stimulate discussion.
Something of the following was desired.

Which structures were available?
The list was intended to stimulate, not be inclusive or exclusive.
But surely you could find first person prefix forms with +ah for statments
of permission?
E.g. Gen 19.8 אוציאה- נא
Jud 15.1 אבאה אל אשתי
They were the 'corrrect' or 'best' answer in the list.

הבה is used in situations like Gen 11.3, 4, 7, and Jud 20:7 as well as
singular situations like Gen 29.21 הבה לי (where its original meaning 'give'
fits) and Gen 38.16 הבה נא אבוא אליך, but is it good for a classroom? I
would think not, unless it might have provided a formalism for student to
teacher. But the overall structure is not attested [while נתן 'give' is
attested with a following infinitive, the relatively rare יהב 'give' is
not], so it is best not to use. The point is to show that there may have
been such a structure, to give some awareness of potential holes in system.

Similarly with תן 'give' and הנח 'place'. both verbs are attested in
contexts where they can mean 'allow, give permission'. See Jud 15.1 above:
ולא נתנו אביה לבוא 'and her father did not give him [=permit him] to "go
in".' There are multiple permutations, of course, תן, תן לי, תנה, תנה לי, תן
נא, תן נא לי, הנח, הנח לי, הניחה לי, הנח נא, הנח נא לי, הניחה נא לי. I doubt
whether all of the permutations are attested, I haven't checked. It is open
for constructive discussion. In any case the imperative with an infinitive
is not used for requesting permission in the Bible.

The last item הרשני לצאת 'permit me to go out' was a purposeful example of
potential Late Biblical
Hebrew. Checking on this here, I find that a noun (רשיון) is attested in
Ezra and the verb is attested in DSS  (Dam. 11.20). Should one exclude it,
or include it? Personally, I don't see any problem with it and it fits the
SecondTemple language, but I don't use it in class (nor would I assume that
Brian would, specifically because there are people out there looking for
excuses not to use this methodology.) [PS: The question of how much Second
Temple 'high' Hebrew to allow is a policy question with no 'right' answer.
On the side, I certainly disagree with the assumption that there were no
mother-tongue Hebrew speakers in the SecondTemple period. There certainly
were, and those in the last two to four generations with competency in all
the necessary data and skills to deal with the question agree with me. But
if you wish to differ, please start another thread. Your difference has been
duly noted, and registered as 'doubtful'.]

>The closest I can
> think of would be “May I go out?” אצא נא החוצה
Yes, אצא נא החוצה works.
And I am perfectly happy with 1 Sam 22.3 as PARTIAL support. Of course, it
is a third person quotation where the 'ah' ending was not an option. So for
the first person one might expect both אצאה נא and אצא נא and also  אצאה
and potentially even אצא. Lamed-alef verbs frequently omit the -ah option,
but they also include them. And other verbs more frequently use the -ah
ending, (lamed-yod, a.k.a. lamed-he, excepted, of course).

On vocab, לצאת is more appropriate than לעזוב in most situations.

The point of this excercise is to see an area where bHebrew may prefer to
handle something syntactically, e.g. אכתבה "I would write [in an appropriate
context='let me write']" rather than lexically with a list of potential
idioms.

The whole process is quite heuristic  Many a Hebrew teacher will enjoy the
process when teaching classes communicatively. As a benefit, they will end
up controlling Hebrew much better than merely extrapolating from
'grammar-translation'.

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