Math professors know that the negative is but the positive, albeit upside down. They also know that EPES אפס (zero) is not "nothing = no-thing", which is metaphysics, not mathematics, but is rather the number x satisfying the equation a+x=a.
It appears to me that the biblical EPES אפס is a variant of EBES אבס, 'full, fat', and this is, in my opinion, the meaning of APS- EI AREC, 'the ends of the earth, the full extent of the earth'. I think that the English 'and' and 'end' are also one and the same word. When something ends, another thing ands.
Such use of the positive, in the sense of 'complete', to denote the negative in the sense of 'no more, nothing left', is also found, methinks, in TAM (not TAM-IYM) as in Gen. 47:18 or Jos. 4:11, and KALAH, as in Isaiah 10:23.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
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