Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Dear Pere:

I am going through my emails to clean out finished conversations, and
occasionally find unfinished business.

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Of course, Karl, sure that the Masoretes mistook this and this other word.
> But... generally speaking the pi'el marks an intensive (as well as other
> nuances) of the qal.
>

Where do you get this idea of intensification? Is it not from mis-pointing
of Qals as Piels?

>
> Let us take $ILAX in Ex 8:28. Can this be, does it make sense, the usual
> "send"?  No. It is "sending away", "expelling" what makes sense. Paraoh did
> not send the people (to Canaan for holidays, for an example), he expelled
> it from Egypt!   (I'm writing here in the positive, but in Ex 8:28 the
> phrase is in the negative).
>

Yes it does make sense as a simple Qal. If it is pointed as a Piel, the
points are wrong, which is not uncommon among the Masoretic points.

Pharaoh had no intention of expelling Israel, in fact, Moses was merely
trying to get permission to leave peacefully. The expelling came later,
after the death of Pharaoh’s first born.

>
> In Pr 31:19 does it make sense that the woman send her distaff to, say, a
> friend of hers?  No, she "sent her hand with courage, decision..." onto the
> distaff.
>

I’m sorry, but that makes no sense.

A distaff is merely a piece of equipment used in spinning fibers into
thread. There’s no courage or decision to take a simple tool, part of a
typical woman’s daily domestic tasks. There’s no courage in handling what
she probably touched almost every day. Decisiveness? Probably very casual.
Unless the Piel is used as a stative, i.e. indication a habitual action,
this is another example of a mis-pointed word.

>
> Heartly,
>
> Pere Porta
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.