Genesis 6:1 "born"

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Kenneth Greifer
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Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by Kenneth Greifer »

Genesis 6:1 בראשית
6:1 וַֽיְהִי֙ כִּֽי־הֵחֵ֣ל הָֽאָדָ֔ם לָרֹ֖ב עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֑ה וּבָנ֖וֹת יֻלְּד֥וּ לָהֶֽם׃

JPS Tanakh 1917
Genesis 6:1
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

Some dictionaries say there was a pual form of the verb ילד, but I think that might not be true. Is there a pual form or just a niphal for the passive form or a passive form of the kal form? What is the form in Genesis 6:1?
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Jason Hare
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by Jason Hare »

I think everyone agrees that this is qal passive.
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יוֹדֵ֣עַ צַ֭דִּיק נֶ֣פֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּ֑וֹ וְֽרַחֲמֵ֥י רְ֝שָׁעִ֗ים אַכְזָרִֽי׃
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Kenneth Greifer
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by Kenneth Greifer »

I thought the niphal form was the passive form of the kal form. I understand there is a passive participle, but I am confused about what is the kal passive.
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Jason Hare
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by Jason Hare »

The niphal (N) has essentially replaced the qal passive (Gp) in biblical Hebrew, but there are a few verbs in which the Gp still makes an appearance. We see Gp in לֻקַּח "be taken," יֻקַּם "be avenged," יֻלַּד "be born," טֹרַף "be torn in pieces," אֻכַּל "be consumed." I know that they tend to look like pual forms, but there was originally a passive of the qal system. It only has about a hundred instances in the Bible.

You can read about it in Gesenius (2nd English Edition) section 52e and 53u. Since Gesenius, this has been confirmed by research, and it is now a standard part of teaching grammars. For instance, it's discussed at length by Kutz and Josberger on pages 265-267 of their Learning Biblical Hebrew: Reading for Comprehension (2019).
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kwrandolph
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by kwrandolph »

Looking at the unpointed text, it could very well be a Qatal Pual.

I have learned not to put too much trust in grammars, particularly those based on medieval Tiberian Hebrew. Gesenius’ is an example of such.

Karl W. Randolph.
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

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kwrandolph wrote:I have learned not to put too much trust in grammars, particularly those based on medieval Tiberian Hebrew. Gesenius’ is an example of such.
Yes, we know. No modern Hebrew. No conversational Hebrew. No Gesenius. No rabbis. Just your intuition as a non-speaker of the language who reads it without vocalization and could very likely be making millions of mistakes in every turn he takes through reading the Tanach. If you read a word incorrectly a hundred times, you don't get better at reading that word. Where do you get the authority for your readings? It's got to be only in your intuition, developed from reading the words in your own way, guessing and ignoring anyone who has ever proffered an opinion before you.

I put far less trust in an individual's intuition than I do in documentation and systematic analysis. Those who actually give the system a chance will not find nearly as many problems with the system as the one who simply rejects it and thinks he knows better.

Gesenius is a great resource and should be consulted by anyone who is learning biblical Hebrew or asking questions about it. There are mistakes, as there are in any reference work, but it is not what you represent it to be. Contesting the validity of the work again and again will not win over your interlocutors. It's perfectly possible to give your own opinion without adding the caveat that you think Gesenius's work is worthless, don't you think?
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Jason Hare
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

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Since you want to reject everything academic that has come before you, have you ever considered writing out your own grammar? How about showing the world how they should really be doing it by writing up a corrective grammar that will include how words should really be pronounced, how grammar should really be analyzed and how syntax should really be treated? You cannot expect anyone to buy into your system when it isn't, well, a system. Until it is systematized and clarified, it is only ravings and preachment. And until such time as an acceptable "improved" system is laid out, can you just cut Gesenius some slack? At least he wrote his system down, and it just happens to be that everyone in the world who knows Hebrew and has received it from his family tradition and his religious background just happens to think that he wasn't too far off track. Can you win over as many people to your own approach to the Hebrew language?

"Why do you kick against the goads?!"
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Jonathan Beck
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

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^
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kwrandolph
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by kwrandolph »

Jason Hare wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:I have learned not to put too much trust in grammars, particularly those based on medieval Tiberian Hebrew. Gesenius’ is an example of such.
Yes, we know. No modern Hebrew.
Along with that, no mixing of modern Hebrew with its different grammar, different syntax, different vocabulary into an understanding of Biblical Hebrew. That sounds like advantage towards me.
Jason Hare wrote:No conversational Hebrew.
How do you have conversations in a language that hasn’t been spoken for 2500 years and whose pronunciations have long been forgotten. You certainly don’t have conversations in that language.
Jason Hare wrote:No Gesenius.
I tried Gesenius. He turned out to be flakey.
Jason Hare wrote:No rabbis.
Again, when did the rabbis write? The ones that I know of wrote long after documentation shows that the language had been significantly changed: new grammar, new vocabulary, new syntax.
Jason Hare wrote:Just your intuition as a non-speaker of the language who reads it without vocalization and could very likely be making millions of mistakes in every turn he takes through reading the Tanach.
True, I might be making millions of mistakes, most of them in pronunciation seeing as the original pronunciation has been long lost.

How many millions of mistakes are you making by following linguistic patterns that long post-date major changes in the language?
Jason Hare wrote:If you read a word incorrectly a hundred times, you don't get better at reading that word. Where do you get the authority for your readings? It's got to be only in your intuition, developed from reading the words in your own way, guessing and ignoring anyone who has ever proffered an opinion before you.
Or is it that I studied those who went before me, and found that they were untrustworthy?
Jason Hare wrote:I put far less trust in an individual's intuition than I do in documentation and systematic analysis.
I don’t see evidence that Gesenius was particularly systematic. I see more that he was a hack, copying what others had written earlier and trying to fit it all together into his ideology (an ideology which I reject for the poor scholarship that comes out of it).
Jason Hare wrote:Those who actually give the system a chance will not find nearly as many problems with the system as the one who simply rejects it and thinks he knows better.
You don’t know me. You haven’t listened why I reject the system.
Jason Hare wrote:Gesenius is a great resource and should be consulted by anyone who is learning biblical Hebrew or asking questions about it. There are mistakes, as there are in any reference work, but it is not what you represent it to be. Contesting the validity of the work again and again will not win over your interlocutors. It's perfectly possible to give your own opinion without adding the caveat that you think Gesenius's work is worthless, don't you think?
Well, if you had listened, perhaps you would have learned why I say that Gesenius is flakey, best not to be followed.
Jason Hare wrote:Since you want to reject everything academic that has come before you, have you ever considered writing out your own grammar?
You have a copy of my grammar. At least you asked for it and I sent it. It’s in the back of the dictionary I wrote.

I came to my system independently of anyone else, only to learn that a Dr. Diethelm Michel, late professor of Uni Mainz, had come to basically the same system as I have. I have yet to see anything that he wrote. I don’t know if he ever made a systematic grammar.
Jason Hare wrote:… and it just happens to be that everyone in the world who knows Hebrew and has received it from his family tradition and his religious background just happens to think that he wasn't too far off track.
That’s because most people are like me, or more accurately, like what I was. I was taught that even the Masoretic pronunciations were Biblical. I tried to follow them exactly. It didn’t work. My initial introduction to Gesenius was his dictionary, which had been translated into English. The deeper I got into Hebrew, the more I questioned his glosses. I started looking up how words were actually used as listed in Lisowski’s concordance, and found time after time that Gesenius’ glosses don’t agree with a systematic analysis of word usages. I no longer have a copy of Gesenius’ dictionary, my copy fell apart from much use but by that time I had largely written the first draft of my dictionary.
Jason Hare wrote:Can you win over as many people to your own approach to the Hebrew language?
We’ll see. I’m definitely going against the stream of tradition.

Karl W. Randolph.
Kenneth Greifer
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Re: Genesis 6:1 "born"

Post by Kenneth Greifer »

Karl,
Could you give some examples of words or grammar rules or whatever you say are part of Gesenius' ideology and also explain what that ideology is and why you disagree with those things?
Kenneth Greifer
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