Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net>]

"""""Hitpael 1st pers plural bow down/worship"""""


Is there any justification for allowing the following possibilities  
to explain why the Seghol-Heh is suffixed as opposed to the expected  
pronominal suffixes?

1. In all the occaisions where I read the השתחוה I see a  
response to an approaching person or a direct response to God or a  
prohibition against bowing down to false gods.

2. From the incomplete experience that I have with my knowledge of  
Hebrew scriptures I have only seen the expected "normal" pronominal  
endings such as השתחו for example in language that involves  
telling others, direct requests and relating something that happened.

3. Although a very weak proposition, I can not help wonder whether  
something linguistically peculiar is happening here that can not be  
explained by a pure grammar approach;  something akin to this:  In  
Holland we have a peculiar situation regarding the word for Milk.  It  
is spelled: Melk.  And pronounced everywhere as MeLK;  but in Den  
haag and the smaller Delft - just these two places alone, that is  
just one city and a little one, anyone from here pronounces it  
MeLeK.  bearing in mind that people from Den Haag move to the other  
side of Holland and continue this pronounciation, might not this same  
linguistic peculiarity be playing here? I can not believe that Hebrew  
was uniformly spoken, maybe depending upon where you originated you  
had a certain kind of pronounciation that was applied ONLY when  
addressing the response to worship to God and/bowing down to others?  
But other hebrew speaking people would not pronounce this verb the  
same way uniformly.

Not having the benefit of any education in ancient texts or academic  
carreer, I am simply asking for other members thoughts here please,  
that, If I take all three of the above I feel there is some  
justification for all three of the above working together.