Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Chris:

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net> wrote:

"""""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.

You are dealing with an incomplete data set.

The verb שחוה $XWH is found in only Hithpael binyan, but in both Qatal and Yiqtol conjugations as well as participles, with the normal suffixes as expected with a lamed-heh verb after the waw.

The verb שחה $XH is found in Hithpael binyan, but only in the third person plural. It’s also found in other binyanim.

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.

This doesn’t appear to be a regional difference, as the same authors used both. That one author would use both suggests that the two different forms had distinct meanings that were recognized by native speakers. (incidentally, when I learned German, the local dialect pronounced milk as “Milich”.)

Karl W. Randolph.