Proverbs 23:7

Discussion must focus on the Hebrew text (including text criticism) and its ancient translations, not on archaeology, modern language translations, or theological controversies.
Forum rules
Members will observe the rules for respectful discourse at all times!
Please sign all posts with your first and last (family) name.
User avatar
SteveMiller
Posts: 465
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:53 pm
Location: Detroit, MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by SteveMiller »

kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: Why should the hoo even be there? In your translations it shouldn't be there. The "he" subject is included in the verb "say". There is no reason to make the "he" emphatic, nor to separate it from its verb by 2 other verbs.
The ה֥וּא is there not as an emphatic. I haven’t made a study of its use, but often I find it used merely to indicate the subject of the verb. The verbal conjugation makes it redundant, but Hebrew sentences often contain it anyways. This is most common in conversation. In reference to the above concerning word order, this use is to say that the subject, not the action, is most important in the sentence.
How is hoo possibly the most important part of the phrase? Do you think it means "So it is he who says to you, Eat & drink, but his heart is not with you." That would be putting the emphasis on the "he".
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:How about:
For as rotten in his soul, so he is. Eat and drink he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
rotten comes from Jer 29:17 and has to do with not being edible.
These figs are moldy, “hairy”. They may be rotten as well, but the specific reference is to mold.
That is a good association of hair with shaar in Jer 29:17.
Maybe it means, As a mold in his soul, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:If you eat it, you'll vomit.
Jer 5:30; 23:14; 18:13; Hos 6:10 may be related.
Where do you get “vomit”?
It was a mirage. I thought I saw it in Jer 29:17 or following, but it is not there. Thanks, Karl, for catching that. I would have thought it was there.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
Detroit
http://www.voiceInWilderness.info
Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
User avatar
SteveMiller
Posts: 465
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:53 pm
Location: Detroit, MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by SteveMiller »

kwrandolph wrote:My understanding is there’s evidence that already in the first century there was an attempt at textual criticism, at which time inferior versions of books were set aside for better ones. Could some the copies that survived among the DSS be some of the inferior versions that were discarded already in the first century?

However, that doesn’t preclude that the MT has copyist errors even compared to the first century, as Psalm 22:17 and Deuteronomy 32:43 both have variants among the DSS that are superior to the MT.
I understood that there was a committee of rabbis that decided on the correct reading and they destroyed the other versions. That is why there are so few OT manuscripts compared to NT.
To me it seems that pre-Christ, they demonstrated a bias against ascribing divinity to the Messiah. Post-Christ, they had a bias against the NT.

kwrandolph wrote:So far in this discussion there are two main questions: 1) the meaning of שער and 2) the division of the verse. Now I’ll bring in another consideration. Looking at כמו I notice that the decided majority of its uses are found in poetry. Secondly in all but one of its uses is it followed by a noun, participle used as a noun, adjective, once by an infinitive, but only once by what appears to be an active verb. And that one example, Psalm 58:8 (7), appears to be a copyist error.

Therefore, should we be looking not for an active verb to follow כמו, rather something else?
That is an excellent observation, Karl. That may be the difference between כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר and cmo. כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר looks like it is almost always followed by a verb. I just checked the 41 uses in Gen, and all are followed by a verb except Gen 34:22, which is followed by an emphatic pronoun and then a verb.

Isn't the cmo in Ps 58:8 also followed by a noun?

So I think we should be looking for a noun here too.

We have:
For as a gate in his soul, so he is. Eat and drink he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
For as a storm in his soul, so he is. ...
For as a hairy mold in his soul, so he is. ....

You know what, Karl. I think of the 3 I like "gate" the best. It possibly has the meaning of a hidden agenda, which is what is meant here. I don't think it's so much that he shuts you out, though he may, but he also shuts out his compassions and conscience.
He wants to get something out of you. He can turn the charm on and turn it off. Like a switch in his soul.

"Storm" means he could blow up at any time. He is not in control. Whereas gate indicates control. The problem is not impetuosity, but disingenuity.

"a hairy mold" indicates rottenness. He has an evil eye, so that would make his soul rotten. Maybe.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
Detroit
http://www.voiceInWilderness.info
Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
S_Walch
Posts: 343
Joined: Fri May 23, 2014 4:41 pm

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by S_Walch »

SteveMiller wrote:Can you give me an example of the kind of differences you speak of? Do you know of any such differences in Isaiah or Habakkuk, since those are the most complete in DSS?
Thanks.
[OT]

For Isaiah, check Chapters 52-53.

The best examples of differences are the books of Joshua and 1 Samuel. See specifically Joshua chapters 5 & 8, and 1 Sam chapter 11.

As for the Psalms, I'd have a look at Psalm 145 (Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, page 570). :)

[/OT]
Ste Walch
User avatar
Ken M. Penner
Posts: 83
Joined: Wed Sep 11, 2013 12:31 pm

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by Ken M. Penner »

Grant Jeffrey is an unreliable source; that page contains multiple errors.
Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.
St. Francis Xavier University
kwrandolph
Posts: 1531
Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:51 am

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by kwrandolph »

SteveMiller wrote:Thanks Ste. I didn't know that there were those kind of differences. I got that understanding from Grant Jeffrey.
http://www.grantjeffrey.com/article/article1.htm
Steve: I’ve heard of the name Grant Jeffrey, but know almost nothing about him.

This article has serious errors in it.

I noticed that he referred to the “Textus Receptuș” to refer to Tanakh. That’s completely wrong. The “Textus Receptus” was first applied to a version of the Erasmus Greek New Testament printed in 1633. The Erasmus Greek New Testament was not the best version even for its time. This is off topic for B-Hebrew, but I think the Byzantine tradition of the New Testament is the most true to the originals.

He also seems to favor the King James translation over all others as being accurate, but that is easily disproved. Some of the inaccuracies are caused by the fact that the English language has changed, so that some of the things that may have been accurate in 1611 are no longer so today. I personally don’t use it because I don’t understand it.

The reason I keep asking in difficult passages if there are DSS variants is because there are variants that are more than mere spelling differences, contrary to what Grant Jeffrey claimed in his article.

This is not an attempt to tear down Grant Jeffrey as a person, nor even to say that he doesn’t know anything in other subjects, rather it’s merely to say that apparently he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he knows concerning one subject, and only one subject, namely textual criticism in general which includes the DSS.

As for us, we should be careful as to which sources we accept to place our trust.

Karl W. Randolph.
kwrandolph
Posts: 1531
Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:51 am

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by kwrandolph »

SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote: Why should the hoo even be there? In your translations it shouldn't be there. The "he" subject is included in the verb "say". There is no reason to make the "he" emphatic, nor to separate it from its verb by 2 other verbs.
The ה֥וּא is there not as an emphatic. I haven’t made a study of its use, but often I find it used merely to indicate the subject of the verb. The verbal conjugation makes it redundant, but Hebrew sentences often contain it anyways. This is most common in conversation. In reference to the above concerning word order, this use is to say that the subject, not the action, is most important in the sentence.
How is hoo possibly the most important part of the phrase? Do you think it means "So it is he who says to you, Eat & drink, but his heart is not with you." That would be putting the emphasis on the "he".
First of all, this is poetry. If I were to translate this into English prose, I would write, “…so he may say to you, ‘Eat and drink’ but his heart is not with you.” There’s no special emphasis on the “he” other than that it’s the subject of the sentence.

But, as I said, this is poetry, so some of the word order is switched around for poetic license.
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:How about:
For as rotten in his soul, so he is. Eat and drink he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
rotten comes from Jer 29:17 and has to do with not being edible.
These figs are moldy, “hairy”. They may be rotten as well, but the specific reference is to mold.
That is a good association of hair with shaar in Jer 29:17.
Maybe it means, As a mold in his soul, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.
It looks as if you’re desperately trying to hang onto “so he is,”. While I like that idea, “so he is,”, I see no grammatical nor linguistic support for that reading.

Karl W. Randolph.
User avatar
SteveMiller
Posts: 465
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:53 pm
Location: Detroit, MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by SteveMiller »

S_Walch wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:Can you give me an example of the kind of differences you speak of? Do you know of any such differences in Isaiah or Habakkuk, since those are the most complete in DSS?
Thanks.
[OT]

For Isaiah, check Chapters 52-53.

The best examples of differences are the books of Joshua and 1 Samuel. See specifically Joshua chapters 5 & 8, and 1 Sam chapter 11.

As for the Psalms, I'd have a look at Psalm 145 (Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, page 570). :)

[/OT]
Thanks very much for spending the time to do this. I see you are right. I didn't realize The DSS Bible had done so much of the work to highlight the differences between DSS and MT.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
Detroit
http://www.voiceInWilderness.info
Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
User avatar
SteveMiller
Posts: 465
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:53 pm
Location: Detroit, MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by SteveMiller »

kwrandolph wrote: It looks as if you’re desperately trying to hang onto “so he is,”. While I like that idea, “so he is,”, I see no grammatical nor linguistic support for that reading.
That's what it says in a straight forward reading similar to 1Sam 25:25 or Jos 2:21.
I think you are taking too much license in ignoring the the word order and the significance of the ה֔וּא.
I figure it's probably impossible to do a search for such a thing, but from your memory is there ever such a case where the subject is separated from the verb "to speak" or "say" by the words spoken? If I see that, then I won't hang on to "so he is", but without any data, I can't buy the alternative.
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
Detroit
http://www.voiceInWilderness.info
Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
kwrandolph
Posts: 1531
Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:51 am

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by kwrandolph »

SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote: It looks as if you’re desperately trying to hang onto “so he is,”. While I like that idea, “so he is,”, I see no grammatical nor linguistic support for that reading.
That's what it says in a straight forward reading similar to 1Sam 25:25 or Jos 2:21.
Neither of these is poetry, so neither of these is the same as this verse in Proverbs.

In Joshua 2:21, I get the sense that this is an acknowledgement of expectations for her and her family to be saved, because they refer to the future from the point that the statement was made, and refers not to a person, but to a situation.

Even the 1 Samuel 25:25 is not that clean an example, as כשמו כן הוא נבל שמו “as his name, so he is recognized as a fool” the שמו being a participle of a verb that has no exact translation into English, therefore we have to make a free translation to make it understandable in English.
SteveMiller wrote:I think you are taking too much license in ignoring the the word order and the significance of the ה֔וּא.
Not at all. The ה֔וּא refers back to the previous verse’s subject, saying that this is the same guy.

I think you forget that this is poetry, and in poetry the word order is sometimes switched around for poetic reasons. I think you need to keep this in mind too.

Even in prose, Biblical Hebrew word order is not always according to what we expect from English usage. Nor from modern Israeli Hebrew usage.
SteveMiller wrote:I figure it's probably impossible to do a search for such a thing, but from your memory is there ever such a case where the subject is separated from the verb "to speak" or "say" by the words spoken? If I see that, then I won't hang on to "so he is", but without any data, I can't buy the alternative.
The word כן is found over 500 times in Tanakh.

The word אמר in an electronic search is found over 4500 times.

Yes, it would take some time to do a good search on either term. That’s not counting that one should search דבר as well.

What do you think of Isaiah 59:21? Or Isaiah 66:9? Amos 1:13–15?

While I don’t know of anything exactly like this verse in Proverbs, the verse makes sense in the way I read it. I don’t see how it makes sense when one splits the middle portion in two. Remember, כמו is followed by a noun, so it reads “As it were a gate in his life, so he is”? He’s a gate? But if we allow some poetic word order, we get “As it were a gate in his life, so he ‘Eat and drink’ may say to you without his heart being with you.” That makes sense.

Karl W. Randolph.
User avatar
SteveMiller
Posts: 465
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:53 pm
Location: Detroit, MI, USA
Contact:

Re: Proverbs 23:7

Post by SteveMiller »

kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:
kwrandolph wrote: It looks as if you’re desperately trying to hang onto “so he is,”. While I like that idea, “so he is,”, I see no grammatical nor linguistic support for that reading.
That's what it says in a straight forward reading similar to 1Sam 25:25 or Jos 2:21.
Neither of these is poetry, so neither of these is the same as this verse in Proverbs.
True, but wouldn't those 2 verses offer some linguistic support?
kwrandolph wrote:In Joshua 2:21, I get the sense that this is an acknowledgement of expectations for her and her family to be saved, because they refer to the future from the point that the statement was made, and refers not to a person, but to a situation.
Yes, the hoo refers to a situation. "so it is" instead of "so he is".
kwrandolph wrote:Even the 1 Samuel 25:25 is not that clean an example, as כשמו כן הוא נבל שמו “as his name, so he is recognized as a fool” the שמו being a participle of a verb that has no exact translation into English, therefore we have to make a free translation to make it understandable in English.
Wouldn't the verb need to be niphal to give your meaning?
1 Sam 25:25b is very similar in structure to Prov 23:7
For as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with him.
Every literal translation that I have seen translates it that way.
kwrandolph wrote:
SteveMiller wrote:I figure it's probably impossible to do a search for such a thing, but from your memory is there ever such a case where the subject is separated from the verb "to speak" or "say" by the words spoken? If I see that, then I won't hang on to "so he is", but without any data, I can't buy the alternative.
The word כן is found over 500 times in Tanakh.

The word אמר in an electronic search is found over 4500 times.

Yes, it would take some time to do a good search on either term. That’s not counting that one should search דבר as well.

What do you think of Isaiah 59:21? Or Isaiah 66:9? Amos 1:13–15?
If it was important, the way I would do a search would be to limit the search to just Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and maybe Job.
But it doesn't warrant that kind of effort.
In the 2 verses in Isaiah, the אֲנִ֗י is part of the quote, so it is entirely different. The speaker follows the verb אָמַ֣ר.
I don't see what you're getting at with Amos 1:13-15.
kwrandolph wrote:While I don’t know of anything exactly like this verse in Proverbs, the verse makes sense in the way I read it. I don’t see how it makes sense when one splits the middle portion in two. Remember, כמו is followed by a noun, so it reads “As it were a gate in his life, so he is”? He’s a gate? But if we allow some poetic word order, we get “As it were a gate in his life, so he ‘Eat and drink’ may say to you without his heart being with you.” That makes sense.
I agree that your reading makes sense. But it makes for very bad Hebrew writing.
My reading, I think, means just about the same as yours, but I respect the word order and the hoo.
"For as a gate in his soul, so he is. 'Eat and drink', he says to you, but his heart is not with you."
A less literal translation, following the structure of NET or NIV, but with the meaning of "gate" instead of "calculating":
For he is the kind of man who switches on and off his feeling. 'Eat and drink', he will say to you, but his heart is not with you.

“As it were a gate in his life, so he ‘Eat and drink’ may say to you without his heart being with you.” is legal English, but bad writing.
The "he" should follow the quote unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, and I don't see one.
It is much worse in Hebrew than in English because:
1. The English punctuation makes the meaning clear.
2. The pronoun should not be there in Hebrew because it is already included in the verb. In English the pronoun cannot be omitted.
3. In English "He" cannot be the subject of the verbs "eat" and "drink". But in unvoweled Hebrew, "eat" and "drink" can be 3ms perfect, so the reader would have to do a second or 3rd pass to figure out that hoo is not the subject of eat and drink. That is bad writing to make a reader do that. If the writer's intention was that hoo should be the subject of omar, then he should have placed it closer to omar and not before "eat and drink", or not include it at all.

This was a good discussion with you and Ste. I learned a lot. Thanks!
Sincerely yours,
Steve Miller
Detroit
http://www.voiceInWilderness.info
Honesty is the best policy. - George Washington (1732-99)
Post Reply