B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

thanxs for the info!!

Glenn

One of the first questions that came to my mind, which word did Weingreen expect for “ruler”?

חר administrator
ממשל having authority over people, a territory Ez 20:49, Dn 11:3, 5, 1C 26:6
נצב appointed officer
שטר officer, one who passes down commands from higher officials and is in charge of making sure the orders are fulfilled
שר, שרה prince(ss), a title given to one who enforces rules sort of like a policeman or sheriff, to keep people “chained in” to where they should be and what they should do, also a title given to the children of a king, where it was understood that their authority was to enforce their father’s rule, not different from other “princes” who were not sons of kings ⇒ שרי המדינות “regional sheriffs” those who were stationed in vassal lands to enforce the king’s rule 1K 20:14–5, 17, 19, Es 1:3, 8:9, 9:3

Or we can bring in Aramaic loan words such as פחה governor (Aramaic loan word) Ne 5:14, 18, 12:26.

Ah the fun of trying to reverse engineer what a person was thinking at the time he wrote the sentence.

Right now I’m leaning towards שר המדינה. What do you all think?

This is loosely based on 2 Kings 17:24–41. But there it is the people, not a ruler, who sent unto the king for a priest to be sent to them.

Karl W. Randolph.

I also wasn't sure what he expected us to use. In the English-Hebrew dictionary in the back of the book, he only gives "rule" as משל, so I assume that we were on the right path toward his thinking by using mōšēl. It is indeed odd to try to guess what someone was thinking who wasn't our own teacher.

I think that the word נציב=נצב fits here.
Since, according to the story, it seems that the ones who told that to the king were his officers that were set there.