Re: Ps 8:3 (MT): Because of the wailing?
Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 5:57 am
Michael: So you see the same problem as me. Thanks, that was helpful.
Within the last few days I juggled with verses containing פֶּה, but there is definitely not more evidence for פֶּה="wailing" than Job 7:11 which itself is quite small evidence, so I think this isn´t tenable.
Because of this, I decided to try it once again by phrasing it differently:
Sebastian
Within the last few days I juggled with verses containing פֶּה, but there is definitely not more evidence for פֶּה="wailing" than Job 7:11 which itself is quite small evidence, so I think this isn´t tenable.
Because of this, I decided to try it once again by phrasing it differently:
If you´d come across this interpretation - would you think it tenable?[...]
None of this makes a lot of sense. For this reason, I want to propose cautiously the following alternative interpretation: The preposition מִנ doesn´t refer only to the source/origin of something, but also to it´s reason/occasion ("min causae"). And פֶּה means not only "mouth", but does refer also to individuals as speaking persons, and even more frequently to acts of speech and even more abstract to "sound". => God acts as he does in 8:3 because of some utterance of the children.
Because of this, already Smend 1888 interpreted the expression מִפִּי as referring to "prayers" (p. 55f.); cf. also Siegmund/Stade, p. 568 (פֶּה="prayers") and recently Schnieringer 2004, p. 148 ("Um des Schreiens der Kinder willen" [for the sake of the children´s crying]).
I therefore propose the translation "Because of the wailing of sucklings and nursing babes you built a bulwark."
Sebastian