question about noun adjective and tense + Isaiah 7:14 "conceiving"

[Isaac Fried]

Does וְקָרָאת refer to the עַלְמָה or to the prophet? Namely, is it את or אתה?

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[ducky]

וקראת is an old form of וקראה
refers to "she"
it is a perfect form that comes with the prefix W - referring to the future (as most times).

[Isaac Fried]

What, I wonder, could drive a tender young עַלְמָה to give her (first born?) son such an outlandish name as עִמָּנוּ אֵל as opposed to say אוּדִי חָמוּדִי or such.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[Jemoh66]

Karl writes

Going back to the original question that started this thread, there is no grammatical tense relationship in this prophesy. Context is what defines the “when”.

This is very very true. Indeed: Now: עַלְמָה, tomorrow morning: הָרָה, nine months later: יֹלֶדֶת, looking at the baby: בֵּן!, a couple of days later: וְקָרָאת שְׁמוֹ עִמָּנוּ אֵל

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

There's no reason why הָעַלְמָה הָרָה has to be future (tomorrow). For my money it can be read the virgin is pregnant.

[Jemoh66]

Also we should talk about the before and after aspect to hinneh. If we look at is use in Genesis 16 the 2nd person pronoun is suffixed to hinneh—> הִנָּ֥ךְ הָרָ֖ה. So it seems to be both the object of hinneh and the subject of the predicate harah.

So when we look at Isaiah's wording ha'almah is both the object of hinneh and the subject of the phrase ha'almah harah.

[Isaac Fried]

Jonathan writes

There's no reason why הָעַלְמָה הָרָה has to be future (tomorrow). For my money it can be read the virgin is pregnant.

Yes, I fully agree. It is very possible that at the time the prophet uttered his הִנֵּה the עַלְמָה was already pregnant. If there is an understanding in the reading that she was still an עַלְמָה while being heavy with child is up to you to decide. I am afraid that most עלמות would bashfully giggle at this suggestion, but who knows.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[Jason Hare]

I wonder how much the עלמות in King Solomon's harem were blushing.

[Isaac Fried]

Jason writes

I wonder how much the עלמות in King Solomon's harem were blushing.

We need to enquire by the סריס שומר הנשים.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

[kwrandolph]

Look at verse 13, there Isaiah specified the “House of David”. That’s context. Isaiah switched addressees.

Calling Ahab the "house of David" is like calling Donald Trump "the President." Ahab was the king. He was the house of David. His father was also the House of David. Anyone who was the king was the house of David. This isn't projecting anything into the future.

Just as Queen Elizabeth is “of the House of Windsor” but is not “the house of Windsor”, so when we look at the uses of בית דוד especially in Kings, we see that it is used for the dynasty, not individual kings. And it is used to refer to the future e.g. 1 Kings 13:2.

Isaiah lived during the time covered by Kings.

The word comes from the root meaning “to be unknown” hence an “unknown woman”. The reference is not to a woman who has been hidden, rather one who has not had sexual relations with a man.

The opposite is one who is known. Genesis 4:1, Luke 1:34 meaning one who has had sexual relations.

Etymological fallacy

Etymology is sometimes important, sometimes claimed where there is none. Take for example the following sentence, “He struck out in his amorous attempts at the singles bar tonight.” That sentence doesn’t make sense unless one knows the etymology of the phrase “struck out” coming from baseball.

There are patterns by which nouns and adjectives may be derived from verbs. For example, there are many words derived from “to act” including “act (two words)”, “action”, “activity” and several more.

Likewise in Hebrew, some words are derived from verbs, some words are not. Here’s an example of a word used of people (at least expected to be) never sexually active from a verb meaning “to be unknown” in opposition to the sexually active term “to know“. “Virgin” describes those people. “Unknown” fits the etymology.

I don’t claim that all nouns and adjectives in Hebrew are derived from verbs. A rough seat-of-the-pants guess is that about half are not derived from extent verbs.

That’s a silly claim. Further, how would you translate it without using a tensed verb in English, to match what is in Hebrew an untensed clause?

Do you have any examples from Tanakh for the difference between “the king is good” and “the good king” using “good” and “king”?

Are you really asking me to teach you basic Hebrew? If you're asking, I'll give you a lesson in how adjectives agree with the nouns that they modify, and that if the adjective is indefinite while the noun phrase is definite, then it is functioning as a predicate adjective and makes up a sentence. Do you need a lesson in what everyone learns from around the third week of Hebrew class—just after covering the formation of nouns and adjectives, before learning anything about verbs?

Wow! In this verse, you accuse Isaiah, a native speaker of Biblical Hebrew, highly literate, didn’t know basic Hebrew.

Here you have three words used adjectively of a noun that is definite, yet none of those three words are definite.

Are you sure you’re not just being formulaic here?

Yep, I'm sure. Again, just tell me you're sincerely wanting to know, and I'll demonstrate it for you.

I haven’t studied this particular question, so I can’t think of other examples like Isaiah 7:14. I would not be surprised if there are more.

By the way, not once in Tanakh does the phrase המלך הטוב mean “the good king”, rather every example I found has contextual clues for different meanings.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Isaac Fried]

This is what, the usually very reserved, etymoline says about the etymology of "virgin":
probably related to virga "young shoot," via a notion of "young" (compare Greek talis "a marriageable girl," cognate with Latin talea "rod, stick, bar").

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com