Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Shead <sshead.email AT gmail.com>]

Kirk,

The problem with the first option seems to be the paucity of evidence for
'echad functioning adverbially.

With your preferred translation - and I confess that I haven't looked into
this further, I'm just asking on intuition - it doesn't seem obvious to me
that B would be extended that sense in biblical Hebrew. In the English
expression "one has God chosen in him", the preposition "in" seems to be
expressing a rather unusual subsense. In the entry for "in" in my *Australian
Oxford Dictionary* (sorry for all those "in"s!), it is listed as a discrete
sense: "with the identity of (*found a friend in Mary*)". Am I right in
thinking that this is the sense you have in mind, and is this sense found
elsewhere for B in the Hebrew Bible? It doesn't strike me as a particularly
obvious metaphoric extension from the basic local or instrumental senses.

Regards,
Stephen Shead
Centro de Estudios Pastorales
Santiago, Chile

---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kirk Lowery <Kirk AT GrovesCenter.org>
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:19:15 -0400
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Anderson-Forbes analysis of 1 Chron 29:1
> Philip,
>
> Sorry for the delayed response. Here is my take on things:
>
> Translation: "My son Solomon -- God has chosen him alone (echad) -- is
> young and inexperienced." [echad understood as a noun functioning as an
> adverb] The majority of English translations more or less follow this
> analysis.
>
> A more "literal" translation might be: "My son Solomon -- one (only) has
> God chosen in him -- is young and inexperienced." [echad is the object
> of the verb; BOW 'in him' is now interpreted as a simple prepositional
> phrase]
>
> I prefer the second analysis.
>
> The entire phrase from echad to elohim is an imbedded clause. It is a
> thought which has been interjected into a nominal (verbless) clause.
> There is no relative pronoun or function. Yes, English syntax might
> require a relative pronoun and some translations do this, but I think
> the translation above better reflects what the Hebrew is doing.
>
> I offer my own take on the syntax analysis of this embedded clause:
>
> http://www.grovescenter.org/public/1c29-1-3.png
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Blessings,
>
> Kirk
> --
> Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
> President & Senior Research Fellow
> The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research
> --
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>
>