Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Pere:

You’ve known me long enough to know that throwing Bible translations at me means nothing, I wanted to see yours or someone else’s grammatical explanation with which you agree.

You are quite right that both here and in Numbers 22:16 that we have a prefixed Mem on HLK, though there is a difference in that here the Mem signals a comparative, while Numbers 22:16 it does not.

As in the case of the Deuteronomy passage we recently discussed, where the DSS cleared up copyist errors, are we facing the same thing here? Is this verse found in the DSS and if so, is it different?

The example from Nahum 3:18 is plural from the verb listed as P%H, to spread out, scatter. The context here is singular and seems to have a different meaning.

It could be that this use of NP$ is from the same root as P$ foolish arrogance (?), found only in Job 35:15, making the final reading “Better the sight of the eyes than going about being foolishly arrogant, even this is futile and spiritually displeasing.” In other words, going by sight is better than barging ahead with foolish arrogance. Does that make sense to you?

Or it could very well refer to doing things as you see them, is better than running around like a chicken with its head cut off. In this use, NP$ would be from the same root as P%H, but here meaning that one has spread himself too thinly, so that he doesn’t get anything done.

It would have been nice that the ancients had preserved their vowels as well as their consonants, so that where words were differentiated by their vowels, we today could recognize them. As it is, this leaves us guessing.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com> wrote:

Karl,

I think that MHLK in Ecc 6:9 is quite parallel to MHLK in Nm 22:16. And concerning NP$, if it were a Niphal, we should rather think of NP$W in Nah 3:18 as something to compare with.
But in my opinion NP$ is simply, here, a noun that depends on HLK.
Now, the core of the entire question is: What does HLK-NP$ mean in Cohelet's mind?
I feel myself not enough ready and prepared to give a sure answer to this question.
And that's why we find such translations of this verse as (for instance):
KJV ------  Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire
NAS ------- What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires.
BBE -----  What the eyes see is better than the wandering of desire.

What Cohelet surely says is that MR)H (NYM is better than HLK NP$.
I'm afraid I cannot help you very much.

Friendly,

Pere Porta