Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jerry:

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.


What I meant is the English semantic range of “lifeless”. You seem to limit
it to clinical life, whereas in actual practice, it is used for a far wider
semantic range, of which clinical lifeless is only a small portion of its
semantic range.


>  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.


I never intended to limit “lifeless” to a clinical meaning, rather
according to a wider semantic range as used in speech and literature. That
you are limiting it changes the argument from one that I made, to one that
you made, which is a very different argument.


>   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.
>
> That was a slip-up, yet the meaning of תהו is somewhere between
uninhabited and lifeless, containing elements of both. I’m not sure which
is the best English word, though a broad meaning (not just your narrow
definition) of lifeless may be better.

>
>
> (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.
>
> Yet the “void” is by definition uninhabited, lifeless. Remember also that
this is poetry.

>
>
> (3)  For Isa 40:17, you can only be engaging in special pleading.
>
> “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are reckoned none and
lifeless to him.” How is that special pleading? What is your translation?

>
>
> (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.
>
> I gave a translation of the verse, a translation that clearly shows that
the idols themselves are meant. What’s your translation of the verse?

>
>
> (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?
>
> “I did not express in hiding, I did not say in a place of land in darkness
to the seed of Jacob—lifelessly they search for me—I am YHWH, the one who
expresses justice, sets before straightness.” In other words, the reason
they don’t hear God is because they search for God without vitality,
spirit, merely going through the motions.

>
>
> (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.
>
> You’re right I missed the point of the passage, as I was looking at merely
the one verse for the purposes of this discussion.

But he “used up his strength for that which is … and futile” and in that
context, lifeless (broad meaning) fits.

>
>
>  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
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.