Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

To All:

The normal dictionary meaning for this happax is “slaughtering knife”, but is it accurate? Where does that meaning come from? It’s not obvious from this context.

It appears from the form that the word is from the root XLP which has a wide meaning of changing, when used of position the idea of passing through, by, on, when used of objects to change, exchange, once even used as a euphemism for death as in “passed away” Proverbs 31:8. Can you see any connection in meaning between this and “slaughtering knife”? Right now I fail to see a connection.

One of the ideas discussed years ago was that on nouns that are both masculine and feminine, is that one of the uses of the difference is that the feminine indicates generality while the masculine specificity, so in this case the masculine refers to a specific set of clothing, namely the priestly robes?

Any ideas?

Karl W. Randolph.