Dear Gabe,
Third-person pronominal suffixes augmented with nun are attached to the long prefix verb (the future/imperfective) and not to the short prefix verb (the jussive). Consequently, a jussive rendering like "let his God teach him" is completely out of the question. The word order of subject-verb with the prefix verb is also generally diagnostic of indicative vis-a-vis modal.
Regards,
David Kummerow.
I don't know why Soncino saw fit to translate it this way. I also don't trust
Artscroll. But it seems that the only way to read the verse is "teach him."
The direct context is the following little passage:
The prophet said to Israel: Repent!
Israel responded: We cannot overcome our evil inclinations which control us.
The prophet said: Discipline (ysrw) your inclinations!
Israel responded: "His god will teach him."
The back-and-forth between Isaiah and Israel is Israel's refusal to take the
prophets' advise and an attempt to throw the burden over to someone else.
Furthermore, the passage leads up to the discipline of the inclination. So
that "teach him" is the only appropriate reading.
Following David Kummerow's comments, I note that in Rabbinic Hebrew,
the regular imperfect expressed wishes:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OPQXid589wIC&pg=PA122&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1_1&sig=ACfU3U1F3yustFFLMFtAcsa0QrIFLq7Vng#PPA124,M1
If you search for jussives or tenses -
http://books.google.com/books?ei=zXxpSMeiLaayjAHkh_TgBQ&id=OPQXid589wIC&dq=fernandez+rabbinic+hebrew&q=tenses+OR+jussive#search
you can then look up some of the following pages which may also be of
interest:
104, 105, 175.
It therefore is rather sensible that a 3rd generation Talmudic authority would
read the verse as such.
Yitzhak Sapir
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:30:26 -0500
From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] yorenu (teach US)
To: "b-hebrew-lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <486996C2.5000404 AT earthlink.net>
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Gabe,
Your reading seems to be the standard one, in thinking that the point is just to illustrate the unrepentant and defiant nature of the Israelites (that's us!). And if that's all there is to it, you are right that there's no need to translate R.b.b.Hana's yorenu as "teach us" rather than "teach him" (as we agree to translate it in Isaiah). Nonetheless Soncino saw fit to translate "teach us" -- why?
HH: The reason would be a word play. The original comment is made about a farmer and his farming.
So the Israelites could take the forms of the words and make it a statement about themselves, daring
God to teach them. This really would amount to a declaration of unbelief in the threats of divine
judgment that Isaiah was making.
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