B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Indeed, שבט $EBET, 'branch, shoot, rod, stick', is related to שוֹט $OT, 'whip', as in Prov. 26:3
שׁוֹט לַסּוּס מֶתֶג לַחֲמוֹר וְשֵׁבֶט לְגֵו כְּסִילִים
NIV: "A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools!"

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Well, aavichai, you are mighty confident in your answers. Can you enlighten us on how you have come to your confidence?

aavichai wrote:in Job 21:9
the word שבט is a noun and it means "Stick"
and in a metaphoric way it means: God's punishment or rod -- (Could be a plague or an enemy)
in this case its a construct state which means:
"the rod of God" or "God's Rod"

When a negative references a noun, and that includes most participles that have the action of a noun in Biblical Hebrew, the negative is expressed with אין . That is just as true in Job as the rest of Tanakh.

The negative לא is used over 4000 times, I haven’t checked every use, but a spot check turns up none that are connected with a noun—almost always with a verb, rarely as a stand alone לא where we would use “No!” A couple of cases connected with a preposition, but never so far with a noun.

So if שבט is a noun, where’s the verb?

aavichai wrote:in Isaiah 9:3
וְאֵת מַטֵּה שִׁכְמוֹ שֵׁבֶט הַנֹּגֵשׂ בּוֹ הַחִתֹּתָ כְּיוֹם מִדְיָן
again there's a construct state שבט הנגש means the rod of his oppressor
and its the apposition of "staff of his shoulder"
because it's actually the same thing.
the את is no needed. sometimes you use it, sometime not.

This is true, if שבט is taken as a restatement of מטה . But is it?

On the other hand, שבט is in the right construction that it can be taken for a verb. Why not take it as a verb?

aavichai wrote:and הַחִתֹּתָ is frim the root חתת and it is Hiph'il Qatal
this is the way this form of root acts in Hiph'il Qatal
chek also הֲסִבֹּתָ in 1 Kings 18:37
וְאַתָּה הֲסִבֹּתָ אֶת-לִבָּם אֲחֹרַנִּית

If this were a Hiphil Qatal, it’s a second person singular. Who in this passage is the second person singular? Where is he mentioned? In 1 Kings 18:37 the second person singular is part of the sentence and readily recognized, but who is he in Isaiah 9:3? Where is he identified?

On the other hand, if that’s a noun derivative from חתת , it’s then a restatement of הנוגש בו in the same manner as you want us to understand שבט above.

I don’t see what you see, what am I missing? You have confidence, I have questions.

Karl W. Randolph.

Karl,

I think Deuteronomy 32:21 has "no god" and "no people."

Kenneth Greifer

Karl,

Looking at the dictionary in the Blue letter Bible they use H3808 (they put an h before the strong's number), it shows Psalm 43:1, Jeremiah 5:7, Deuteronomy 32:21, Isaiah 31:8, and Isaiah 10:15 as examples of "no" before a noun. I did not check Biblehub's dictionary also.

Kenneth Greifer

Kenneth Greifer wrote:Karl,

Looking at the dictionary in the Blue letter Bible they use H3808 (they put an h before the strong's number), it shows Psalm 43:1, Jeremiah 5:7, Deuteronomy 32:21, Isaiah 31:8, and Isaiah 10:15 as examples of "no" before a noun. I did not check Biblehub's dictionary also.

Kenneth Greifer

Thanks for the update. I checked about 40–50 examples, which is about 1% and reported what I found.

Psalm 43:1 is before an adjective.
Jeremiah 5:7, Deuteronomy 32:21, Isaiah 31:8 and a few examples in Isaiah 10 all have verbless clauses where the idea is of something that “is not” in contrast to something that “is” (the normal verbless clause). Thus the verbless clauses the לא is not really attached to the noun, rather to an implied “to be”.

Contrast that to Job 21:9 where the idea from the context is “there is no” where Biblical Hebrew uses a אין instead of a לא. That לא appears implies that שבט is a verb rather than a noun.

Thanks again for the update.

Karl W. Randolph.

Job 21:9
בָּתֵּיהֶם שָׁלוֹם מִפָּחַד וְלֹא שֵׁבֶט אֱלוֹהַּ עֲלֵיהֶם
is (unanimously) translated as "Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not on them."

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Dear "aavichai",

Please append your true first and last (family) name to your posts, as per our forum's policy. You can go to your user control panel and place it in your signature which will handle it automatically for you. (Cf. my signature below; anything besides your name is optional.)

Thanks!

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.

aavichai wrote: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.

aavichai wrote:2kings 6:19
לֹא זֶה הַדֶּרֶךְ וְלֹא זֹה הָעִיר

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

aavichai wrote:Exodus 4:10
לֹא אִישׁ דְּבָרִים אָנֹכִי

I am not a man of words.

aavichai wrote:2Samuel 18:20
לֹא אִישׁ בְּשֹׂרָה אַתָּה הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה

You are not a messenger today.

aavichai wrote: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.

aavichai wrote: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.

aavichai wrote: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).

aavichai wrote: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 …

aavichai wrote: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.

aavichai wrote:hi karl

1. the word שבט means a stick in its basic meaning
see at:
isaiah 10:15 10:24
proverbs 10:13
exodus 21:20
micha 4:14

most of the almost 200 time it is in the metaphoric meaning as:
the king's scepter and rule

The king’s scepter is a physical stick.

aavichai wrote:the punishmest of God or a father

Oh? Where “punishment” without a physical tool for that punishment?

aavichai wrote:and of course a tribe
there's no doubt about it, you can clear your mind.
if you want I'll write all of the occurrences in the bible and you can check it one by one

I already checked all the occurrences one by one.

aavichai wrote:2.when you say that
שבט is in the right construction and that it can be taken for a verb
How?
if it is in the right construction then it's the first component in a construct state
which I agree, How it can be a verb?

The written form can be a noun, it can also be a third person singular Qatal verb. Context tells us which to read. Context gives clues that here it is a verb.

aavichai wrote:and even if somehow you want to see it as a verb, this root ש-ב-ט is just a noun in hebrew
do you know one verb from this root?

How do you know it’s just a noun? What are your sources? You have to admit that Tanakh contains only a subset of the language that was spoken during Biblical times and this root could very well have been a verb then. When a document as short as the Gezar calendar has vocabulary not found in Tanakh, how many more words were there in the total spoken language?

Both in Job 21:9 and in Isaiah 9:3 I see contextual clues that indicate that שבט is a verb.

aavichai wrote:3. who is the second person singular
listen man, if you read it, you have to see it in the whole context
this is a praise to God after the fallen of Israel's enemy that will come
so of course he means that God will break the enemy's rod

Oh, you’re talking about Isaiah 9:3.

In the context around Isaiah 9:3 God is mentioned in the third person. So from where does this second person come? Who is he?

aavichai wrote:4.the last thing, about the NO
where is the NO in this verse
I don't understand the discussion about the NO
can someone tell me what you talking about and where
thanks.

If you had been following the discussion, the “No!” comes from discussing Job 21:9 and how it’s evidence that שבט may be a verb also in Isaiah 9:3.

Karl W. Randolph.

aavichai wrote:Hi Karl
I don't quite understand
but when you're translate the verses to english
I see that you translate everything with "Is not" or "Are not"

Exactly, because the correct translation of a verbless clause requires that addition for a correct English rendition of the Hebrew idea. You should know that.

aavichai wrote:so the verse in Job is the same

"and there is not a God's rod upon them (on them)"

“there is not” is a different word, as I have repeatedly stated. That word is אין.

aavichai wrote:or
"and God's rod is not upon them (on them)"
or something like that

The context indicates that God is doing an action, and the only word in this context that can be taken as an action verb is שבט.

aavichai wrote:I don't realize why you say it has a different grammar

If you had been reading what I say, my claim is precisely because poetry does NOT have a different grammar that it should be read that way.

aavichai wrote:and by the way
remember that is not a verb in this root שבט anyway

Your sources? Why do you make that claim? Can you back it up?

aavichai wrote:if you say that it is a onetime verb in the bible, no one will stop you
but it seems to me that this conclusion is kinda far
then just accepting that the bible grammar is not one dimensional

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

aavichai wrote:and really, maybe i didn't understood your comment
so if my comment is irrelevant then i hope you'll write again
but it has no problem with the grammar

Avichai Cohen

Karl W. Randolph.