Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Isaac Fried:

 

You wrote:  “This is how I see it [Jacob’s ‘ladder’/SLM] in my dream: A pulley wheel גלגלת GALGELET is securely attached to the gate of heaven.”

 

Your dream of a pulley is either an Egyptian dream, where pulleys may have been used to build the pyramids, or a Babylonian dream, where pulleys may have been used in southern Mesopotamia to lift water.  Jacob had never been to such places, nor had his father Isaac.  So it makes no sense to think that Jacob would dream of an Egyptian or Babylonian pulley system.  Pulleys were unknown in Canaan.  GLGLT means “skull, head, poll” [II Kings 9: 35], and in Biblical times did not mean “pulley wheel” to the Hebrews, as you assert.

 

I see Genesis 28: 12 as being 100% Hebrew imagery, which happens to use a Hurrian loanword SLM, but is definitely not Hurrian imagery.  The Hurrians imagined a tunnel/a-a-pi to the netherworld.  By stark contrast, chapter 28 of Genesis gives us this glorious all-Hebrew image of a “gateway”/SLM up to the gate of heaven.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois