Isaiah 29:9 Play on words?

[Isaac Fried]

Not to forget the שָבַע $ABA, 'promise, assure, pledge, vow', as in Gen. 24:7
אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר לִי וַאֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע לִי לֵאמֹר
NIV: "who spoke to me and promised me on oath"
KJV: "which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying"
דִּבֶּר is a variant of צִבֶּר, 'accumulate', here, portent words.

And not to forget the number שֶבַע which is the numerical mark for שֶפַע, 'plenty, abundance', as in Deut. 33:19
כִּי שֶׁפַע יַמִּים יִינָקוּ
KJV: "for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas"
abundance = outpouring of good.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Jemoh66]

Hi Karl,

When I was young I took Tae Kwan Do. As a white belt I learned how to throw a punch, how to do a high block, a low block and a side block, how to throw a front kick and a side kick. All these moves were then put together or choreographed into a form of 18 moves. When you perform the form you imagine an invisible opponent. It was quite simplistic and crude. In fact it doesn't look anything like fighting. I learned nine forms to earn my black belt. When I received my black belt, the teacher said now you are a student, you are ready to learn. But even then I didn't really understand what I had learned. I could perform 9 forms, and fake sparring sets called one-steps, and rudimentary self-defense. Although the knowledge at that level was substantial. By the time you complete all 10 of your forms during a test for a confirmed black belt, you've demonstrated the proper form and appropriate control of 421 moves.

After that I got busy with life. Twenty years later I got back into Tae Kwon Do. This time YouTube was up and running. I started watching videos of how advanced practitioners applied the basic moves and sets of moves you learn in the forms. I also watched other disciplines. I remember how in my youth people would argue over form. Like how a karate practitioner would hold a knife hand block vs how a TKD guy would hold the same block. Which is better? Whose right? But when I watched advanced students learning how to apply the forms to real-life fighting, I realized what I had learned was just an elegant, simple grammar, a framework of sorts. What I called a knife-hand block, and karate guy called a knife-hand strike, was actually applied to a grab, because real fighting is up close and dirty.

I say all this because, my attitude at one time was that the grammar I was taught was insufficient or defective somehow. But my attitude was wrong. The curriculum was developed over time by people who were trained to fight. I don't think our BH grammars were set up to be a precise representation of BH, but just a framework. Real understanding comes from interacting with the text. Most students do that in Hebrew 3 and 4. That's where that interact with exceptions, and usage, and dialects, copyist errors, etc...

So I think it is perfectly acceptable to teach a beginner about the basic tri-literality of BH roots. Then when he/she progresses to an advanced level, they will find out the language is looser than the grammar.

Jonathan Mohler

[Jemoh66]

Karl,

I would consider שעשע as a bi-literal root. I would see the gemination of the root as the first layer in transformation:

root ------------------ ʃaʕ

---------------------- ʃaʕʃaʕ------------------ gemination

binyan ---------------- hitʃaʕʃɛʕ

metathesis ------------ hiʃtaʕʃɛʕ

Jonathan Mohler

[Isaac Fried]

שעשע is זע-זע = זעזע, 'shake, quake', and שעשוּע is 'amusement, entertainment, excitement', as in the Latin: panem et circenses, לֶחֶם וְשַׁעֲשׁוּעִים. We recall also the devotionally excited Shakers and Quakers.
Also related to שעשע is צעצע. In spoken ("modern") Hebrew צעצוּע CACUA is 'toy, trinket, trifle'.
It appears to me that both שעה and שעע is 'turn, remove', as in turning one's eyes to gaze, or to avert them away, as in Isaiah 6:10.

שעה is related to זֵעָה, 'sweat, perspiration', as in Gen. 3:19, related, in turn to צֵאָה, 'excrement', that comes out, or leaves, יוֹצא the body.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

Jonathan:

When I was young I took Tae Kwan Do. As a white belt …

But did you have to unlearn earlier learned moves as you advanced to your black belt?

I say all this because, my attitude at one time was that the grammar I was taught was insufficient or defective somehow. But my attitude was wrong. The curriculum was developed over time by people who were trained to fight. I don't think our BH grammars were set up to be a precise representation of BH, but just a framework. Real understanding comes from interacting with the text. Most students do that in Hebrew 3 and 4. That's where that interact with exceptions, and usage, and dialects, copyist errors, etc...

So I think it is perfectly acceptable to teach a beginner about the basic tri-literality of BH roots. Then when he/she progresses to an advanced level, they will find out the language is looser than the grammar.

It is not without merit that people on this list, which is where I learned the phrase, jocularly talk about “first year lies”. I’ve had to unlearn things that I was taught in first year Hebrew. Because I never had the opportunity to study third and fourth year Hebrew, I had to discover that they were wrong and look for the correct answers on my own.

I was taught that all Biblical Hebrew verbs have a triliteral root. That’s not true. That’s something that I had to unlearn. A correct teaching would be “a majority of Biblical Hebrew verbs have a triliteral root, but not all” and give examples.

I was taught that the Masoretic points were totally trustworthy, I now know they aren’t. Possibly the most common error is where hophals are pointed as hiphils. There are times that I find that a verse is unintelligible until I strip off the Masoretic points and read the words differently than as pointed. I stopped looking at the points a long time ago.

There are other things I was taught, but had to unlearn. It’s one thing to say “this is a basic step upon which you can build later” and another to say “oh, what we taught you before is not quite true”. I think the latter situation is why so many who studied basic Hebrew for their jobs (clergy in churches) give up on it and stop using it because “it’s too difficult”.

As you wrote, “Real understanding comes from interacting with the text.” and that’s what I credit for where I learned most of my Hebrew.

Jonathan Mohler

I would consider שעשע as a bi-literal root. I would see the gemination of the root as the first layer in transformation:

root ------------------ ʃaʕ

---------------------- ʃaʕʃaʕ------------------ gemination

binyan ---------------- hitʃaʕʃɛʕ

metathesis ------------ hiʃtaʕʃɛʕ

However, שעשע is found four times as a Kal or Piel compared to the three times as a hitpael. Then another seven times as a participle/noun. There is no evidence that I know of within Hebrew of it being used as anything other than a quadriliteral. I can speculate all I want, but I think I need to stick with the evidence.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Jemoh66]

I was taught that all Biblical Hebrew verbs have a triliteral root. That’s not true. That’s something that I had to unlearn.

A correct teaching would be “a mate]

I didn't take Heb 1; I tested out of it. But I can see how even if that is not what a prof taught, it still would be what the student "caught," because of the simplicity of first year textbooks.

A correct teaching would be “a majority of Biblical Hebrew verbs have a triliteral root, but not all” and give examples.

I agree. In fact my beef with seminaries is more about methodology and philosophy. I would require basic linguistics (phonetics, phonology, language structure) before allowing a student to take a Biblical language. I studied Greek before linguistics, but BH after linguistics. Huge difference. Even before linguistics, when I studied Greek, I found several things frustrating:
1. American students don't understand English linguistically, so they don't understand basic concepts like personal pronouns, or the concept of mood, or what a subjunctive is. The teacher has to slow the class down and leave Greek to explain these basic concepts as they relate to English.
2. The explanations given by teachers are often not very helpful, or obscure. For example, in Greek my prof was trying to explain the MIDDLE voice. His explanation just wasn't adequate. My BH teacher didn't have any linguistic knowledge, so he couldn't explain why the waw conjunctive changed from a consonant to a vowel before bilabials. I could offer an explanation with only one semester of phonology.

A first year phonetics student would recognize the masoretic points as phonetic representation, and would understand the difference between pointed and unpointed text. A semester of phonology would explain the schwa's and the accents. A phonology student would recognize why the environment of a begadkfat can dictate whether to make it a fricative or a stop. A little bit of language structure (syntax) would allow someone to appreciate the lengthening of a final syllable vowel at the end of a sentence. And some "text linguistics" (discourse analysis) allows you to spot how a writer is using word order to give meaning at a text-level rather than at a syntactic level.

However, שעשע is found four times as a Kal or Piel compared to the three times as a hitpael. Then another seven times as a participle/noun. There is no evidence that I know of within Hebrew of it being used as anything other than a quadriliteral. I can speculate all I want, but I think I need to stick with the evidence.

That's fine. But for my money, it just screams gemination, and my instinct tells me there's a bi-syllable root, diachronically at least. But like דבר which does not have a qal form, I have no problem with the fact that a שע is unattested. This kind of gemination is quite prevalent in languages, especially in related afro-asiatic languages. I've mentioned this example from Swahili before:

kata, cut
katakata, dice

In the following article, the author talks about reduplication (what I was calling gemination) and how it is used for emphasis, intensity, and amplification. https://www.dropbox.com/s/glqtg0eevh2on ... s.pdf?dl=0
Check out pages 6-8.

Jonathan Mohler

[Isaac Fried]

Jonathan says,
But for my money, it just screams gemination, and my instinct tells me there's a bi-syllable root, diachronically at least. But like דבר which does not have a qal form, I have no problem with the fact that a שע is unattested. This kind of gemination is quite prevalent in languages, especially in related afro-asiatic languages. I've mentioned this example from Swahili before:
kata, cut
katakata, dice
Says I
So far so good, but what is this "unattested" שע that is being repeated to create שעשע?

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[kwrandolph]

A correct teaching would be “a majority of Biblical Hebrew verbs have a triliteral root, but not all” and give examples.

I agree. In fact my beef with seminaries is more about methodology and philosophy. I would require basic linguistics (phonetics, phonology, language structure) before allowing a student to take a Biblical language. I studied Greek before linguistics, but BH after linguistics. Huge difference. Even before linguistics, when I studied Greek, I found several things frustrating:
1. American students don't understand English linguistically, so they don't understand basic concepts like personal pronouns, or the concept of mood, or what a subjunctive is. The teacher has to slow the class down and leave Greek to explain these basic concepts as they relate to English.

I learned these things before becoming a junior in high school, learned from learning other languages (two speaking, one studied in class) as well as what I was taught in grade school English. That was without a formal class in linguistics.

Educational standards have gone way down since I was in school.

2. … My BH teacher didn't have any linguistic knowledge, so he couldn't explain why the waw conjunctive changed from a consonant to a vowel before bilabials. I could offer an explanation with only one semester of phonology. A first year phonetics student would recognize the masoretic points as phonetic representation, and would understand the difference between pointed and unpointed text. A semester of phonology would explain the schwa's and the accents. A phonology student would recognize why the environment of a begadkfat can dictate whether to make it a fricative or a stop. A little bit of language structure (syntax) would allow someone to appreciate the lengthening of a final syllable vowel at the end of a sentence. And some "text linguistics" (discourse analysis) allows you to spot how a writer is using word order to give meaning at a text-level rather than at a syntactic level.

The problems for me and my fellow students were not these, rather upon reading the text to find all the examples that ‘don’t follow the rules’. My conclusion is that the Masoretic rules were wrong, not for the dialect that they spoke when they invented and applied the points, rather that their dialect of Hebrew was different from Biblical Hebrew, and when they applied their dialectal forms to Biblical Hebrew, the points are often wrong for Biblical Hebrew.

Then, what I’ve mentioned before, there are some clues that seem to indicate that Biblical Hebrew was a syllabary, with each letter standing for a syllable, during pre-Babylonian exile times. But post-Babylonian exile Jews spoke Aramaic in the house and market, and within a few generations at most applied Aramaic pronunciations to Hebrew writings. By the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, Hebrew was the medieval Latin of that time and place. Add a thousand years to the time of the Masoretes with their pronunciations, grammar and traditions, are any of the points that were correct for the Masoretic dialect correct for Biblical Hebrew?

However, שעשע is found four times as a Kal or Piel compared to the three times as a hitpael. Then another seven times as a participle/noun. There is no evidence that I know of within Hebrew of it being used as anything other than a quadriliteral. I can speculate all I want, but I think I need to stick with the evidence.

That's fine. But for my money, it just screams gemination, and my instinct tells me there's a bi-syllable root, diachronically at least.

It screams that to me too, but is not found.

What we have in Tanakh is only a subset of the language that was spoken and written in Biblical times, so a biliteral root may have been in the original language, just that we don’t have any examples of such surviving. On the other hand, it may have been quadriliteral from the get-go. We just don’t know, so I just stick with what is found.

But like דבר which does not have a qal form,

דבר does have a qal form, but recognizable only as a participle. How many qals were pointed as piels by the Masoretes? And visa-versa?

I have no problem with the fact that a שע is unattested. This kind of gemination is quite prevalent in languages, especially in related afro-asiatic languages. … In the following article, the author talks about reduplication (what I was calling gemination) and how it is used for emphasis, intensity, and amplification.…

Where the difference between qal and piel can be recognized from form in an unpointed text, namely in the participles, it appears that the qal is a simple indicative, without reference to aspect, while the piel indicates imperfective aspect. The piels that I noticed refer to continuous or repeated actions.

Here’s where a reliance on cognate languages can lead astray.

Jonathan Mohler

On the other hand, if I remember correctly, there are some verbs that are found in geminate and non-geminate forms. I hadn’t thought to study those yet, but could the geminate forms refer to emphasis, intensity and amplification?

Karl W. Randolph.