Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Nope. Appetite. Work with the context.

You don't see many things, Karl, because you work only with your own lexical dictionary, rather than work with semantics and contexts. That's fine for you, but the rest of us will work with contexts.

GEORGE ATHAS

Dean of Research,

Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)

Sydney, Australia

From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 13 January 2013 4:18 PM
To: George Athas <george.athas AT moore.edu.au>
Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ecclesiastes 6:9 ³better than going ??²

George:

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 6:17 PM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au> wrote:

NP$ as a verb has the basic idea of breathing as in being alive, to take a breather, to revive. As a noun it refers to all of these activities. I translate the noun as “life” knowing full well that the English word nowhere comes close to all the nuances carried by the Hebrew NP$.

Karl, here's a quick list of other occurrences I came up with to whet your נפשׁ.

• Exodus 15.9

My life will be filled… speaking of pharaoh and his soldiers who were thinking that they would make their lives more full with captives and treasure.

 

• Isaiah 56.11

“dogs strong of life” i.e. lively

 

• Jeremiah 22.27; 44.14;

“lifting up their lives” i.e. making an effort

 

• 50.19

“fill their lives”

 

• Ezekiel 24.25 (though this has more the sense of desire, rather appetite specifically)

Again the phrase of lifting up a life, i.e. putting in the effort. This is probably the closest of all the verses here, in that it’s used in parallel to desire of a specific person or thing, but even here “appetite” is not a necessary understanding of the word in its context.

 

• Hosea 4.8

“lifting up a life” making an effort towards their perversions

 

• Proverbs 6.30;

to fill a life that’s empty because he’s hungry.

 

• 23.2;

master of his own life

 

• 28.25 (though this is broader, probably greed); 

“broad of life” i.e. imposing his will on others

Unless you are using “appetite” in a way that I have never seen anyone before use it, not once in these verses does “appetite” fit. I don’t see from where you get this idea that it means “appetite” in these verses.