Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Karl,

 

Here's my reply to the rest of your post.

 

You ask: "Why do you think I normally don’t read commentaries?"

 

I don't know the reason, but I am sure it is not a good one.  It is not to one's credit to ignore the wealth of scholarship of those who have devoted their lives to examination of the biblical text.

 

You say: "If you reported accurately concerning these commentaries (not saying that you didn’t, just using this as a rhetorical intro), here we find commentators have not done their homework vis-à-vis the Hebrew language is concerned."

 

Let me assure you, the scholars I quoted, Wilson and Block, are quite well known for definitely doing their homework.  And they have especially done their homework with regard to work on the Hebrew text and the understanding of the Hebrew language.  Comments like these are ill-informed and needlessly denigrating.

 

You say: "First of all, this is a participle, used as a noun. This is not a verbal use of the word."

 

This is incorrect.  To be  sure, it is a participle and it is a noun, but the participle is a verbal noun, and there is still a verbal content in the noun.  The only difference between a finite verb and a participle is that the finite verb refers to the action, and the participle refers to the one performing the action.  There is no semantic difference with regard to the meaning of the verb.

 

You ask: "Secondly, is the reason that he is not someone who is one who puts forth a case for God to this people because God had no use for him to do so, or was it because the people were not ready to listen? Is not the answer in the context, namely that the people were defiant until their reason for defiance, namely Jerusalem, fell?"

 

Your questions here suggest that you have not understood the problem or the context.  The book of Ezekiel is fairly chronological.  In the verse in question, 3:26, if Yahweh is telling Ezekiel that he will not be putting forth a case for God, then that doesn't correspond to the fact that for the next seven years (and the next twenty-some chapters), that is exactly what Ezekiel does – he presents the case over and over again as to why Yahweh is going to judge the people, bring a siege against Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and send many more Israelites into exile.

 

You said: "Or to put it in a more exacting definition, based on discussions with Ruth, it is used for a wide variety of functions, hence it has a wide semantic range."

 

When linguists use the term "wide semantic range," they mean exactly what I have been arguing for, that a word has a wide variety of meanings.  But this is what you are denying.

 

You said: "I just looked up Gen. 20:16 and 24:14, 44 and in all three cases the consonantal text is consistent with נכח and not יכח. Further the contexts are consistent with נכח and not יכח. Therefore you can’t include those in your list for יכח. It looks as if you have documented some cases where the Masoretic points are wrong. . . . Your case is greatly weakened by including examples that are not from the root of יכח."

 

While I appreciate the attempt, and while it is possible that everyone else in the whole history of interpretation is wrong and you are right, I consider that possibility to be very remote.  Perhaps there is a lexicon or commentary on the text of Genesis out there that takes the three cases, Gen 20:16; 24:14, 44, to be places where the verb is נכח rather than יכח, but I haven't come across them yet.  And there are no occurrences of a verb נכח in the Hebrew Bible.  I know you think there are, but you need to demonstrate this rather than simply stating it and taking it for granted.  יכח does fit the occurrences in these three Genesis passages, as an extension of the idea of rendering a decision or issuing a judgment, choice, or decree.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com