Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

pere, steve,

> Mini usually is a preposition meaning “away from”, but that doesn’t seem to
> work since a verb follows. 

actually in Ps 45:9 (8) 

MINNI HEKhALEY ShEN, MINNI SIMKhUKhA

the word MINNI is just a poetic repetition of the initial word MIN, added to
maintain the couplet meter. hence still as a preposition it refers to the 
halls of ivory and not to the verb. so, the sense of "away from" is still
appropriate. 

biblos (strong 4480) provides more than 30 cases of minni, none in any other
book (one in Jer which has a different meaning).

JOB: 12:22 14:11 15:22,30 16:6,16 18:17 20:4 28:4 30:30 31:7 33:18,23,30
Ps 44:11,19 45:9 68:31 74:22 78:2,42 88:9
Isa 22:4 30:1 38:12 46:3

the meaning varies between from, away from, more than, because, by. i find the
best translations:

away from..., from within..., due to..., among... since...

its restriction to three biblical books is interesting. are there other
lexical connections between the three? also i noted that the
use is very idiomatic and follows the pattern A-B-minni-C in most examples,
so that minni is the penultimate word in the versicle. and it is only used
poetically, never in prose. thus, it should be considered an element of style
and not of spoken grammar. 
 
the specific meaning "from me" is restricted to 3 cases in Isaiah 
and one in job.

ed lipinski 2001 mentions arabic min/mini and makes a connection with
assyrian minitu=measure and aramaic/hebrew mny=count (???). these seem
connected to hebrew manah, minyan but connection with minni is unclear to me.

he adds that the use min="by" was introduced to semitic only AD. strangely, in
the biblos list Job 28:4 was translated as "by". see also Ps 74:22.

nir cohen