Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chavoux Luyt <chavoux AT gmail.com>]

Shalom Peter

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From: ps2866 AT bingo-ev.de
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To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
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Cc:
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Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:56:35 +0200 (CEST)
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Subject: [b-hebrew] Syntactic role of "you" in Hag 1,4
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Dear Friends,
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I can't understand the syntactic role of ATEM (you - mas. Pl.) in Hag 1,4.

Is this pronomen stressing the preceeding LaKHeM "for you", say "you

yourselves" ?

I would translate it directly as: "Is this the time for you, for you to sit
in your own houses..." . It does not sound quite right in English, but does
sound right to me in Hebrew. :-) The first LaKHeM refers to the time while
the ATeM refers to the sitting in their houses.

Are there parallel examples for this usage ?
>
I am not aware of other examples (but there might be). However, do keep in
mind that Hagga was written in post-exilic Biblical Hebrew and there were
definitely some changes in the language compare to the Biblical Hebrew from
before the exile. So it is possible that this usage was more common after
the exile compared to before (when the majority of the TaNaCH was probably
written).

 HTH

Blessings
Chavoux Luyt