Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Michael:

To me, it looks as if you have two words that you question:

The first word, עקב (QB has the meaning of crooked, both literally and metaphorically. We have the plaint in Genesis 27:36 “Is not his name Crooked, and he has dealt crookedly with me these two times?” When used metaphorically, it refers to moral crookedness.

The second word, אנש )N$ is one that I have questions on now that you ask, and I don’t have my reference book (concordance) nearby. Is there any time that that spelling is used for other than a man? It is used around 500 times, which makes it impractical to analyze each occurrence for purposes of this discussion.

Even with the spelling of אהוש )NW$ the vast majority of times refers to man. The couple of times that it refers to illness, it is not as the illness itself, but modifying that illness as “incurable, malignant”.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Michael Abernathy <mabernathy AT conwaycorp.net> wrote:

I'm having some trouble getting a handle on Jeremiah 17:9.
עָקֹ֥ב הַלֵּ֛ב מִכֹּ֖ל וְאָנֻ֣שׁ ה֑וּא מִ֖י יֵדָעֶֽנּוּ׃

A number of Christian translations read something like

The heart is more deceitful than anything else and incurable who can understand it?

This translation seems to be influenced by the doctrine of total depravity.  I don’t have a real problem with that but I’m not sure the context fits this.  The context of verse 10 seems to make this look like it focuses more on the difficulty of understanding the human mind.

 

 וְאָנֻ֣שׁ suggests a number of options, sick, incurable, man (both the Syriac and LXX interpret it that way),

The second half may be translated in the following ways:

“and incurable, who can understand it?”

“and sick, who can understand it?”

“and who will understand it is sick?”

“and it is man, who can understand him (or it)?”

I see that Jeremiah 17:14 may give some credence to the idea of the heart being sick but I’m not sure how this would be understood.  Would that be sick as in mentally ill, raving lunatic, moral sickness?

I’d appreciate any help in sorting this out.

Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy