Exodus 4:25-26 new reading

[Jemoh66]

aavichai:

If you looked at my response to Kenneth Greifer, a verbless clause has an understood “to be” within the clause. When we translate such clauses into English, we need to add a properly conjugated “to be” into the sentence to make it proper English. A negative verbless clause has a לא attached to the unspoken “to be”.

When I originally considered this question, I didn’t take verbless clauses into account. That was a mistake on my part, but it was done quickly with a small sample that had all verbs present. What Kenneth Greifer did was to bring up verbless clauses in which the לא is connected to the understood “to be”.

When we come across verbless clauses in Biblical Hebrew, the positive simply has no verb, but a negative has a לא connected to the unspoken “to be” and not to a noun. Look at your examples, they are verbless clauses.

There is A LOT "No" before nouns and adjective and participle
(some of them before particle and sometimes there is a verb in the sentence
but the NO refers to the noun/adj./part.
I can't write it all but there's more
and you're right that it "should be" אין
but sometime we see לא
and I think that most of the time that the לא replaces אין
is in more a poetic sentences
but I don't sure because we need to check one by one
the verses in Job are clearly more poetic and you can see there is a lot usages of this style

To give a better understanding to what I said above, I’ll translate the following examples into proper English in which I’ll conjugate “to be” as it would be used in English.

2kings 6:19
לֹא זֶה הַדֶּרֶךְ וְלֹא זֹה הָעִיר

This is not the road and this is not the city.

Exodus 4:10
לֹא אִישׁ דְּבָרִים אָנֹכִי

I am not a man of words.

2Samuel 18:20
לֹא אִישׁ בְּשֹׂרָה אַתָּה הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה

You are not a messenger today.

2Chronicles 30:26
כִּי מִימֵי שְׁלֹמֹה בֶן-דָּוִיד מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא כָזֹאת בִּירוּשָׁלִָם

For as such was not in Jerusalem from the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel.

and of course, because we are talking about Job 21:9
בָּתֵּיהֶם שָׁלוֹם מִפָּחַד וְלֹא שֵׁבֶט אֱלוֹהַּ עֲלֵיהֶם

What makes Job so difficult to read is that he has a very large vocabulary (for a Biblical writer) with many of the words found nowhere else in Tanakh. But just because it’s poetry, do we assume different grammar rules for the language? I don’t.

so in Job 18:17 there's the same style
זִכְרוֹ-אָבַד מִנִּי-אָרֶץ וְלֹא-שֵׁם לוֹ עַל-פְּנֵי-חוּץ

His memory becomes lost from the land and outside he has no name (is not a name for him).

and again in Job 18:19
לֹא נִין לוֹ וְלֹא-נֶכֶד בְּעַמּוֹ

He doesn’t flourish for himself and an offspring is not among his people …

Job 26:4
כִּי-אָמְנָם לֹא-שֶׁקֶר מִלָּי

For truly my expressions are not false.

And so in Job 21:9 “Their houses are full, they don’t fear, and God doesn’t beat upon them.” where I make the guess that the verb has a meaning along the lines of “beating, hitting” often used by shepherds to guide their sheep.

You need to take into account that verbless clauses have an understood “to be”. Once you do that, then you find that לא is not connected to a noun.

Karl W. Randolph.

In light of all this wouldn't it make more sense to view this phrase as a nominal phrase with understood to be verb? "Their houses are full, and the rod of God is not on them" Wouldn't this be more consistent with (1) your argument for nominal phrases and (2)the fact that שבט is found only as noun in the entire BH volume, and(3) the expression rod of God being a common idiomatic phrase for punishment, and (4) it is strengthened by parallelism, i.e. both phrase are nominal phrases. If shebhedt works as a noun, I see no need to force a verb here.

The NETBible scholars go this route, "Their houses are safe and without fear; and no rod of punishment from God is upon them."

[Isaac Fried]

Karl asks
What do you mean by that? Do you claim that there are many grammars in Tanakh?

Says I
There is a grammar in the Tanakh only for those who read it punctuated. Those who look at the consonants only see no grammar. Moreover, I suspect that they actually see no language at all, only questions about "clues" and "evidences".

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

In light of all this wouldn't it make more sense to view this phrase as a nominal phrase with understood to be verb? "Their houses are full, and the rod of God is not on them" Wouldn't this be more consistent with (1) your argument for nominal phrases and

Well, it would be easier because:

1) you would be happy
2) I wouldn’t be arguing with you.

But it doesn’t fit what I see in the text.

(2)the fact that שבט is found only as noun in the entire BH volume, and

You don’t know that. There’s no way you can know that. Written Biblical Hebrew has no vowels, therefore only from context can you determine whether or not a particular use of שבט is in fact a noun. In fact, two contexts lead me to conclude that it is in fact a verb.

(3) the expression rod of God being a common idiomatic phrase for punishment, and

Not in Tanakh. The claimed phrase is found only once, in this verse. Only six times is שבט and אלהים found in the same verse, and each of those times referring to a tribe.

(4) it is strengthened by parallelism, i.e. both phrase are nominal phrases. If shebhedt works as a noun, I see no need to force a verb here.

Parallelism is often not followed, therefore that it’s often imperfectly applied is not an argument for one reading over another.

As for “forcing”, I find a noun is more forced here than a verb.

The NETBible scholars go this route, "Their houses are safe and without fear; and no rod of punishment from God is upon them."

I don’t accept translations as evidence for how I should read Hebrew. All translations show is how other people interpreted the text. I may have good reasons to disagree with such readings.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.