שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

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Jemoh66
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Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by Jemoh66 »

Isaac Fried wrote:Jonathan writes,
"I think when we come across a Hithpa'el or a Niph'al, we need to consider all the different kinds of nuances that a middle voice can bring to the table of options."

Says I,
Some Hebrew examples would be of the greatest help.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
Just the overlap of the Niphal and Hithpael as an example. Here is an extract from a paper by J.S. Baden.
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Jonathan E Mohler
Studying for a MA in Intercultural Studies
Baptist Bible Theological Seminary
kwrandolph
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Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:51 am

Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by kwrandolph »

Jemoh66 wrote:Karl,

you wrote,
Biblical Hebrew has a completely different grammar. Herod is still the subject, but the main verb is passive be beheaded with the English main verb cause indicated merely by a conjugation of the Hebrew verb, and John the grammatical object that received the passive action. Harod the subject caused the passive action.

This is my understanding of the Hophal when it’s used as a transitive verb.
This is where I disagree. A stative root in the Hiphil can accomplish this. That was my argument about KBD, which is a stative verb.
Using your example of כבד which is a stative in Qal, I then did an electronic search for the Hiphil form. It is found in nine verses as a verb. Two of those verse are repeats of other verses, so we have seven unique uses. In each of those uses, the Hiphil denotes a change in status, therefore it’s not stative in Hiphil.

It isn’t a stative verb in Hophal either.
Jemoh66 wrote:And it's why I am not inclined to see a Hophal in that one case because the Hiphil of a stative is sufficient, and sits well in the syntax of the phrase, while the Hophal called for too many ad hoc exceptions to the rule.
Are you sure you deal with Hophals? After all, in Yiqtol, the Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, and Hophal are all conjugated the same. The only way to find which is which, is the context.
Jemoh66 wrote:Just as you are using beheaded, although you're seeing it as a passive. Certainly beheaded can be seen as a passive as well as a stative. The passive refers to the process while the stative refers to a final state. So in John and Herod's case I could agree to a passive as opposed to a stative, but not with KBD. Kaved/kavad means to be heavy, or become heavy. In the hiphil hikhvid, the S causes the O to become heavy, grow heavy.
It appears that you agree with me.

A stative refers to a constant state, without change.

But in the Hiphil, we find a change in status, which is an action. Where there’s action, there’s no stasis.
Jemoh66 wrote:I do agree with you about the fuzziness in the Binyanim. I am reading a fascinating 57 page paper right now (I'll put it in a separate post) which gives a really good explanation for the oddities we see in BH verb usage.
How closely does the author adhere to the Masoretic points?

Karl W. Randolph.

Ps: After writing the above, I found myself questioning, is כבד a stative verb even in Qal, so I looked it up. I found places where כבד is used not only in Qal, but also in Niphal, to indicate a stative idea. Therefore, the pattern I find is that the stative is changed by the Hiphil binyan into an active. I expect that the Hophal would have the same effect on the meaning of the verb.
Isaac Fried
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Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by Isaac Fried »

Jonathan,

J. S. Baden could have saved himself good time, ink and paper by recognizing that the Hebrew BINYAN is but a root interlaced with personal pronouns. Different BINYANIM apparently came into BH from differently inventive linguistic traditions.
Because of their equivalence they are used to mutate the meaning of words derived from the same root, and thereby enrich and expand the language, for example
שתק, 'kept quiet'; הִשתִיק, 'silenced'; שִתֵּק, 'paralyzed'.
השתתק, 'he became quite'. נִשְתַּק is not in use, but, the "NIFAL", נִזְכַּר = אני-זכר, 'he recalled', is.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
Jemoh66
Posts: 307
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 11:03 pm

Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by Jemoh66 »

Isaac Fried wrote:Jonathan,

J. S. Baden could have saved himself good time, ink and paper by recognizing that the Hebrew BINYAN is but a root interlaced with personal pronouns. Different BINYANIM apparently came into BH from differently inventive linguistic traditions.
Because of their equivalence they are used to mutate the meaning of words derived from the same root, and thereby enrich and expand the language, for example
שתק, 'kept quiet'; הִשתִיק, 'silenced'; שִתֵּק, 'paralyzed'.
השתתק, 'he became quite'. נִשְתַּק is not in use, but, the "NIFAL", נִזְכַּר = אני-זכר, 'he recalled', is.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
You're beside the point. The point is that Ancient Israelites used Niphal as reflexive and Hithpael as passive. That's what I mean about the "fuzziness" in the usage of the Binyamin. Baden is simply addressing the issue and attempting to come up with a way to understand the phenomenon. My theory is that the niphal was reflexive to begin with (pre-BH) and got used more and more as a passive as speakers dropped what was originally a Qal Passive. I think the Qal Passive form survived only the Stative Pa'el form. This would explain the passive use of the Hithpa'el. As for the Niphal, I see the Ni- prefix as a 1st pers prefix from ani.
Jonathan E Mohler
Studying for a MA in Intercultural Studies
Baptist Bible Theological Seminary
Jemoh66
Posts: 307
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 11:03 pm

Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by Jemoh66 »

Karl,
Using your example of כבד which is a stative in Qal, I then did an electronic search for the Hiphil form. It is found in nine verses as a verb. Two of those verse are repeats of other verses, so we have seven unique uses. In each of those uses, the Hiphil denotes a change in status, therefore it’s not stative in Hiphil.
You're confusing the resulting meaning of the hiphil form with the meaning of the root in the qal. Yes a hiphil is always active. And a hophal is passive. But the hiphil can be the causative of a stative root
hikhbid, cause to be heavy, harden.

or the causative of an active root.
הֹודִעֵ֤נִי נָא֙ אֶת־ דְּרָכֶ֔ךָ, cause me to know yours ways.

Both of these could be used as hophals in different contexts.

For example in our discussion of Exodus 8-9, I was open to a hophal in one particular place if the subject were the heart, not Pharaoh. In the second example above I could see Moses elsewhere using a hophal and saying something like, I was caused to know the ways of the LORD.
Jemoh66 wrote:
And it's why I am not inclined to see a Hophal in that one case because the Hiphil of a stative is sufficient, and sits well in the syntax of the phrase, while the Hophal called for too many ad hoc exceptions to the rule.


Are you sure you deal with Hophals? After all, in Yiqtol, the Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, and Hophal are all conjugated the same. The only way to find which is which, is the context.
That was my point. The context rules out a hophal in that one particular case for the reasons I gave.
Jemoh66 wrote:
Just as you are using beheaded, although you're seeing it as a passive. Certainly beheaded can be seen as a passive as well as a stative. The passive refers to the process while the stative refers to a final state. So in John and Herod's case I could agree to a passive as opposed to a stative, but not with KBD. Kaved/kavad means to be heavy, or become heavy. In the hiphil hikhvid, the S causes the O to become heavy, grow heavy.


It appears that you agree with me.

A stative refers to a constant state, without change.

But in the Hiphil, we find a change in status, which is an action. Where there’s action, there’s no stasis.
Partly,
1. I would just say state, not constant state. One can be happy one moment and sad the next, as a result of a hiphil for example ;-)
2. the hiphil of a stative root results in a change of state. You could cause someone to be sad, or cause something to be broken. The causation is an active process, but the result is a state. Verbs of movement are similar, this is why in Archaic English, we read I am come, not I have come. Even today in French, Dutch, and German, movement verbs require be as their auxiliary. Je suis venu, ik ben gekomen,...
Jonathan E Mohler
Studying for a MA in Intercultural Studies
Baptist Bible Theological Seminary
Isaac Fried
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Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:32 pm

Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by Isaac Fried »

Jonathan,

You say: "I see the Ni- prefix as a 1st pers prefix from ani." Yes!, Yes!, I fully agree with you. This initial PP ani refers to the beneficiary of the action, the rest depends on the nature of the act and the surrounding circumstances. This is why I am wary of all these English terminological arguments of "passive", "reflexive", "stative", etc. It appears to me that נִשְבַּר = שָבוּר, 'broken', the rest is what we fictate in our heads.

Ah, but what about Malachi 3:13
חָזְקוּ עָלַי דִּבְרֵיכֶם אָמַר יהוה וַאֲמַרְתֶּם מַה נִּדְבַּרְנוּ עָלֶיךָ
KJV: "Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?"
NIV: " “You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the Lord.
“Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’"
Is this נִּדְבַּרְנוּ talk and listen at the same time?

I will repeat what I have said before. The different BINYANIM were created over the years by different groups of Hebrew speakers, and when these variously invented verbal structures came together into BH (or mainstream Hebrew) they created this puzzling, rich and fertile grammatical redundancy for J. S. Baden, et alios, to chase after.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
kwrandolph
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Re: שלום in Jeremiah 4:10

Post by kwrandolph »

Jonathan:

Yes, in the Qal, we deal with stative verbs, but Hiphil conjugation (it is a conjugation, not a separate lexical item) changes the stative verb to an active verb. We mustn’t ignore the effect that conjugations have on verb meanings.
Jemoh66 wrote:You're confusing the resulting meaning of the hiphil form with the meaning of the root in the qal. Yes a hiphil is always active. And a hophal is passive. But the hiphil can be the causative of a stative root
hikhbid, cause to be heavy, harden.
It appears to me that we have different focus as we analyze these actions. I focus on the action itself, which is active, while you focus on the result of the action, which is stative. I don’t forget that the result of the action is a stative, but I look at the action before us, not the down the road result which is stative.
Jemoh66 wrote:or the causative of an active root.
הֹודִעֵ֤נִי נָא֙ אֶת־ דְּרָכֶ֔ךָ, cause me to know yours ways.

Both of these could be used as hophals in different contexts.
This verse’s construction, Exodus 33:13, is an interesting one in that you have the verb ידע (an action) in the causative passive with two objects, a direct object and an indirect object. As far as I found it, this construct is only found written by people who were native speakers of Biblical Hebrew, the latest person to use it was Ezekiel.

This hiphil is also well attested in Biblical Hebrew.
Jemoh66 wrote:For example in our discussion of Exodus 8-9, I was open to a hophal in one particular place if the subject were the heart,
In English, it’s clear that heart is the subject of the dependent clause, and the subject of the passive verb.

But English separates out the causative from the verb, and puts it into a separate clause. That way we can analyze each part separately. Biblical Hebrew combines the causative and passive into one conjugation, then uses syntax to express the same idea in one clause where English uses two clauses.

Now in Exodus 8:11, there’s no question that the heart is the subject of the causative passive. There’s no other noun connected with the verb.

In a verse like Exodus 8:15, we have two nouns connected with the verb. The form of the verb could be Qal, Niphal, Hophal, but not Hiphil. (That I left out Piel and Pual is another discussion.) In Qal and Niphal, the verb is stative. We have established that stative verbs become active when conjugated as Hiphil or Hophal. In this verse, do we deal with a stative “heart is hard” or the active “heart become hardened”? If stative, then the verb is Qal or Niphal. If active, then it is Hophal. So is this verb’s use in this verse stative, or active? Was the heart hard, or did it become hard? I read the context that the heart became hard, an action, not a stative.

You take this as a defective spelling for the Hiphil, most likely a copyist error. If this were the only example, I’d be inclined to agree with you that this is a copyist error. But there are several such verbs conjugated as Hophals, but have two nouns connected with them, so either we deal with many copyist errors, or do we deal with a grammatical and/or syntactical construct not described in our Hebrew textbooks?
Jemoh66 wrote: not Pharaoh. In the second example above I could see Moses elsewhere using a hophal and saying something like, I was caused to know the ways of the LORD.
Before today, I hadn’t noticed the Hophal connected to two objects. Right off the first reading, it appears to be the form of “cause it to be known by me” or something similar.
Jemoh66 wrote:Jemoh66 wrote:
And it's why I am not inclined to see a Hophal in that one case because the Hiphil of a stative is sufficient, and sits well in the syntax of the phrase, while the Hophal called for too many ad hoc exceptions to the rule.
“Ad hoc” means that each case is different, unique. But what I find is that there’s a consistent pattern that can be used each time to come to the same conclusion. A consistent pattern indicates that we’re dealing with a rule, not exceptions to a rule. This is just the opposite of “ad hoc”.
Jemoh66 wrote:
Are you sure you deal with Hophals? After all, in Yiqtol, the Qal, Niphal, Piel, Pual, and Hophal are all conjugated the same. The only way to find which is which, is the context.
That was my point. The context rules out a hophal in that one particular case for the reasons I gave.
How? See above. I see the context as limiting our options to Hophal or copyist error.
Jemoh66 wrote:
Jemoh66 wrote:
Just as you are using beheaded, although you're seeing it as a passive. Certainly beheaded can be seen as a passive as well as a stative. The passive refers to the process while the stative refers to a final state. So in John and Herod's case I could agree to a passive as opposed to a stative, but not with KBD. Kaved/kavad means to be heavy, or become heavy. In the hiphil hikhvid, the S causes the O to become heavy, grow heavy.


It appears that you agree with me.

A stative refers to a constant state, without change.

But in the Hiphil, we find a change in status, which is an action. Where there’s action, there’s no stasis.
Partly,
1. I would just say state, not constant state. One can be happy one moment and sad the next, as a result of a hiphil for example ;-)
You’re right, I overstated my case. What I mean is a state that is not changing at that time.
Jemoh66 wrote:2. the hiphil of a stative root results in a change of state. You could cause someone to be sad, or cause something to be broken. The causation is an active process, but the result is a state. Verbs of movement are similar, this is why in Archaic English, we read I am come, not I have come. Even today in French, Dutch, and German, movement verbs require be as their auxiliary. Je suis venu, ik ben gekomen,...
That construct for verbs of motion is limited to what has historically been greater Germany. That includes France (even the name “France” is German). When French speaking invaders took over England, they tried to impose that pattern onto English, but it didn’t take. Places outside of greater Germany, such as Scandinavia, didn’t have that pattern.

Getting back to Hebrew: in Biblical Hebrew, I see a pattern of using the Hophal causative where the causative is active, but the action is still passive. As such, the verb is conjugated according to the subject of the active causative, but the action is applied as a passive upon the object of the verb. It’s a pattern, not ad hoc. Therefore, I’m ready to say that here we have a grammatical and/or syntactical rule.

Karl W. Randolph.
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