Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Karl,


First of all, these posts are getting too long.  I suggest that if we keep
this going that we only look at one or two passages in a single post.  Second,
I don’t find a lot of your reasoning cogent, so instead of replying to
everything in this last post, I ‘m going to have to be selective.  I have a
Psalms class to get ready for tomorrow night?  So, just a few things.



(1)  You said, “Here’s a case where we are understanding words with a
different semantic

range, you taking a very narrow understanding, while I a wider one. I also
should have looked at my own dictionary before answering, as the first
rendering there is ‘uninhabited’ as being closest to English. We need to
take into account that English ‘lifeless’ and Hebrew תהו are not exact
equivalents, and anyone who tries to make them so does violence to both
languages.”



Actually, I see things much differently.  I think I am the one arguing for
a wider semantic range, and you the narrow one.  After all, you are the one
who said, “‘Lifeless’ as the meaning of tohu fits all its uses in Tanakh.”  I
am the one arguing it does not.   It is also problematic that you did not
consult your own dictionary at the beginning of this process.  I can only
play with the cards I’m given.



(2)  For Job 26:7, to interpret tohu as “lifeless,” or “uninhabited,”
doesn’t really capture the thought.  It’s not that God stretches the skies
out over lifelessness, or over a place that is uninhabited.  Rather, the
thought is that the north is stretched out over the “void.”  The fact that
the void has no human life is very far from the conceptualization of the
passage.



(3)  For Isa 40:17, you can only be engaging in special pleading.



(4)  For Isa 44:19, you completely missed the point.  The verse is not
talking about things fashioned as idols.  It is talking about those who
fashion the idols.  And those who do this cannot be referred  to as
lifeless.  They have to be alive to make the idols in the first place.  And
it certainly does not mean uninhabited.



(5)  For Isa 45:19, no, you are completely off the mark.  You say it is a
matter of translation, not understanding the term in Hebrew.  But you don’t
either one right.  Your idea about lifelessness is completely off the mark.
Are you even trying to deal with the text?



(6)  For  Isa 49:4, this may be the worst one from you in this whole post.  
You
say, “I see this verse as contrasting the worship of the living God against
putting one’s heart in worldly efforts, for nothing, wearing oneself out
for lifeless objects and futility.”  You have completely missed the thought
of this passage in context.  The servant figure in this passage is the
servant of Yahweh.  He is not complaining that he has followed worldly
“lifeless” objects or pursuits.  His complaint is that in his task of
carrying out the mission assigned to him by the Lord as his servant, he
feels as if he has been laboring to no profit  It seems as if he has failed
in his mission of bringing Israel back to the Lord.  Yet, he will continue
to labor on, confident that the Yahweh will indeed reward his efforts.  Your
interpretation completely ignores the context of the passage.



 I’m going to stop here because everything else you have is more of the
same.


Blessings,


Jerry Shepherd
Taylor Seminary
Edmonton, Alberta
jshepherd53 AT gmail.com