Cc: b-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>, steve AT voiceinwilderness.info
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Word pairs in biblical and semitic literatures
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 19:07:22 -0500
Dear Lloyd,
Word-pairs tend to occur in parallel poetic lines, as you suggest, and the
pairs that you list from Pr 10.1b-c are, of course, semanticaly parallel
pairs *in this verse*, but this is not really the way that the term has come
to be used in the study of ANE poetry (on which see my earlier post).
To use the same example, "wise/foolish" and "father/mother" are word-pairs,
since they occur together, and in this order, not infrequently in the Bible.
But are "makes glad" and "heaviness" a word-pair? [I cite the same version
for consistency.] The piel of SMX [Sorry--I don't have my transliteration
scheme to hand.] occurs 26xx (times) in Biblical Hebrew (15 of which are in
Pss/8xx & Pro/7xx--it is a more-or-less "poetic" form). None of its
occurences parallel TWGH, apart from Pr 10.1. Even in Jer 31.13, where the
"mourning", "joy", "sorrow", "rejoicing", &c. occur--with several "slots"
into which TWGH would seem to fit--it does not occur. This suggests quite
strongly that the verb SMX and noun TWGH are not a word-pair.
TWGH occurs only 4xx (Ps 119.28 (no parallel); Pr 10.1; 14.13; 17.21), so
there is not much evidence upon which to identify them as a pair.
On the other hand, TWGH is either the predicate or subject of Pr 14.13b,
where it occurs with--but does not parallel--the noun SMXH; in Pr 17.21 it
parallels the qal of SMX, but their order is opposite that of Pr 10.1 (TWGH
in 17.21a, qal of SMX in 17.21b). While this implies that these roots were
understood as antonyms--SMX is negated in order to create a synonymous
parallelism--it does not establish their identity as a word-pair; there is
not a large enough sampling to draw this conclusion.
I hope that this makes sense.
Thanks for asking, Steve--this is an interesting line of conversation.
Peace.
Fred
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 6:06 PM, LM Barre <l_barre AT yahoo.com> wrote: