Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
kwrandolph wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 1:57 am
Who said it’s not a participle? Did you read what I wrote?
What you wrote specifically was:
kwrandolph wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 11:46 am
Are you sure this is not a reference to the action of serving, which would be masculine?
I can only assume that "a reference to the action of serving" would be what we say is a "gerund" in English and what would be an "infinitive construct" in Hebrew.
Maybe in modern Israeli Hebrew, but not Biblical Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
I don't know what else you could mean.
First of all, the form is clearly a participle, the context indicating a piel participle.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
This is not the function of a participle.
It clearly is one of the functions of Biblical Hebrew participles.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
Infinitive constructs are indeed grammatically masculine. I don't know what else you might be referring to. Use accepted terminology to be clear about your meaning.
What about my question was not “accepted terminology”?
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
It would also seem that understanding it as "serving" (in the sense of the action) is confusing categories based on the English -ing ending, which has nothing at all to do with Hebrew.
The participle is a noun or adjective, that has several uses in Biblical Hebrew, not all of which are related to the English -ing ending.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
As a participle, it is feminine and refers to Avishag "serving" the king in his old age.
The form here is a masculine singular, which is why I raised my questions.
Jason Hare wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
If it were an infinitive construct, we would expect the form
שָׁרֵת šārēṯ (which later became
שֵׁרוּת šērûṯ in the mishnaic period). It seems to me that you're making some kind of category error based on the idea that both gerunds (infinitive constructs) and participles translate into English with -ing.
Well, it’s not an infinitive construct, so why even bring that up? Nor is it Mishnaic Hebrew, a language that has not only different definitions for some words, but also a different grammar from Biblical Hebrew. Because Biblical Hebrew had ceased being natively spoken centuries before the DSS period, nor was DSS Hebrew, and its later variants of Mishnaic and Tiberian Hebrews, natively spoken, means that we don’t know Biblical Hebrew language as well as some of us wish we knew. Oh we know Biblical Hebrew well enough to get the main gist of the story—it’s when we get to some of the more unusual constructs that we stumble. We guess, based on what we know, but there’s always the chance that we’re wrong.
Another thought that just came to mind: are there nouns that are found in only one gender, irrespective of the sex of the person connected to that noun? That was true in other languages, is it true for Biblical Hebrew too?
Karl W. Randolph.