B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

No rotten tomatoes, but to claim that the hiphil (and hophal) always have a causative force cannot be sustained. לְהַבִּיט does not mean "to cause to stare." It just means "to look." The same with לְהָבִין, which means "to understand," not something like "to cause to understand." The idea of causation adheres to a root only when the root appears in other binyanim (most generally in the qal) in some sense that can be shifted to have a causative feel. Not every root exists in another binyan, and we shouldn't force the idea of causation into every hiphil word.

Jason Hare wrote:No rotten tomatoes, but to claim that the hiphil (and hophal) always have a causative force cannot be sustained. לְהַבִּיט does not mean "to cause to stare." It just means "to look."

First of all, translation ≠ original language. Often words, phrases, grammatical structures that exist in an originating language just cannot be translated into a second language, a second language that lacks that concept. In those cases, the translator comes as close as he can to the meaning, often in ways significantly different from the originating language. As for the meaning of נבט, I understand it meaning “to stare, i.e. look closely at or with expectation”.

Jason Hare wrote:The same with לְהָבִין, which means "to understand," not something like "to cause to understand." The idea of causation adheres to a root only when the root appears in other binyanim (most generally in the qal) in some sense that can be shifted to have a causative feel.

The verb נבט is found both in Hiphil and in Isaiah 5:30 as Qal. In 1 Samuel 2:32, it has the sense of the passive causative connected to an active verb.

As for הָבִין, that’s a Hiphil of what could be a biliteral root, just one of several biliteral roots. But with the insistence that every root be triliteral, it probably should be listed as בון.

Jason Hare wrote:Not every root exists in another binyan, and we shouldn't force the idea of causation into every hiphil word.

Again it comes out that translation ≠ originating language.

Karl W. Randolph.

kwrandolph wrote:Again it comes out that translation ≠ originating language.

I speak Hebrew fluently, in addition to other languages that I speak fluently. I don't see your point in doubling down on this specific statement. "A translation is not the same thing as the original language." Tell me how this has any effect on the fact that הבין does not have a causative sense. It is absolutely incorrect to understand EVERY hiphil form to mean something causative. It just isn't true to how the verbs work or what they mean.

Jason Hare wrote:

kwrandolph wrote:Again it comes out that translation ≠ originating language.

I speak Hebrew fluently

You speak modern Israeli Hebrew fluently, not Biblical Hebrew. Already 2000 years ago DSS Hebrew had a different grammar, different from Biblical Hebrew. Plus there are vocabulary items that have different meanings than what they had in Biblical Hebrew. So what comes naturally to you today in modern Israeli Hebrew, is not necessarily the same for Biblical Hebrew.

Jason Hare wrote:I don't see your point in doubling down on this specific statement. "A translation is not the same thing as the original language." Tell me how this has any effect on the fact that הבין does not have a causative sense. It is absolutely incorrect to understand EVERY hiphil form to mean something causative. It just isn't true to how the verbs work or what they mean.

I haven’t noticed any exceptions to the claim that Hiphils are always causative. It was grammatical in Biblical times. At the same time, I noticed many verbs pointed as Hiphils where the consonantal text in context indicates that they should be other Binyamim, most commonly Hophals.

Secondly, I noticed that there are some dictionaries that list different Binyamim as separate entries, e.g. הביא listed as to bring, separate from בוא to come. Apparently, as the grammar and vocabulary changed, so also the grammatical force of the Binyamim was also lost. Your answer above reflects modern Israeli Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

One word to such an objection: nonsense. Only someone who doesn't speak Hebrew would make such a claim. Anyone who both speaks modern Hebrew and spends weekly hours in the biblical text will know that your distinction is a sham and used to buttress your position when you make claims that are simply untrue (like this one).

I'll wait while you explain how להשליך (which "causes" something to zoom through the air) is any more "causative" than לשלוח (which "causes" people or things to move from place to another) or להפוך (which "causes" something to turn over). Is there a qal stem of לשלוך that embodies the action that the hiphil להשליך causes to happen? There is no such qal stem of this word. To concoct some "causative" nature of להשליך or להבין or להביט is to perform a feat of creativity.

Teaching students that hiphil is always causative is as bad as teaching that piel is always intensive, as if לדבר were somehow a more intensive act than לזכור. There is nothing about the piel that is "intensive" until we have a qal root to contrast it against, and even then all generalizations should be made with care and under the strict awareness that use (and not form) determines meaning.

Jason Hare wrote:One word to such an objection: nonsense.

LOL!

Jason Hare wrote:Only someone who doesn't speak Hebrew would make such a claim. Anyone who both speaks modern Hebrew and spends weekly hours in the biblical text will know that your distinction is a sham and used to buttress your position when you make claims that are simply untrue (like this one).

Then you’ll have to say that Waltke & O’Connor are a sham. I borrowed their book and read in it that they acknowledged that DSS Hebrew (texts other than copies of Tanakh) has a different grammar than does Biblical Hebrew. DSS Hebrew is the ancestor to medieval Tiberian Hebrew, the ancestor of modern Israeli Hebrew.

Jason Hare wrote:I'll wait while you explain how להשליך (which "causes" something to zoom through the air) is any more "causative" than לשלוח (which "causes" people or things to move from place to another) or להפוך (which "causes" something to turn over). Is there a qal stem of לשלוך that embodies the action that the hiphil להשליך causes to happen?

First of all, שלך is found in other Binyamim, meaning “to throw down”. It doesn’t mean “to zoom through the air” in Biblical Hebrew. The Hiphil is used in contexts where the action is done, but not necessarily by the person who causes the action.

Jason Hare wrote: There is no such qal stem of this word. To concoct some "causative" nature of להשליך or להבין or להביט is to perform a feat of creativity.

Are you claiming that where the consonantal text has other Binyamim therefore those who wrote the consonantal text performed feats of creativity?

Jason Hare wrote:Teaching students that hiphil is always causative is as bad as teaching that piel is always intensive, as if לדבר were somehow a more intensive act than לזכור. There is nothing about the piel that is "intensive" until we have a qal root to contrast it against, and even then all generalizations should be made with care and under the strict awareness that use (and not form) determines meaning.

In the consonantal text without points, the Piel is indistinguishable from the Qal except for the participles. That leads to the question, how many Piels are mispointed Qals, likewise how many Qals are mispoinnted Piels? In participles where we can distinguish the difference, there are examples of דבר in both Qal and Piel. So what exactly is the force of the Piel in Biblical Hebrew? “Intensive” is nonsense. Are there patterns with contextual clues apart of medieval Hebrew points that can tell you when to use Piel, and when to use Qal? After all, the Biblical writers knew when to use Qal and when to use Piel, do you know which rules they used?

I’d like to see your answer.

Karl W. Randolph.

I see some truth in what Karl is saying. להבין is indeed not merely 'to understand', but 'to understand something, to clarify something in the mind'. See Nehemiah 8:12
כִּי הֵבִינוּ בַּדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר הוֹדִיעוּ לָהֶם
NIV: "because they now understood the words that had been made known to them"

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Isaac Fried wrote:I see some truth in what Karl is saying. להבין is indeed not merely 'to understand', but 'to understand something, to clarify something in the mind'. See Nehemiah 8:12
כִּי הֵבִינוּ בַּדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר הוֹדִיעוּ לָהֶם
NIV: "because they now understood the words that had been made known to them"

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Are you, then, claiming that the root meaning of הבין is "clarity" and that the hiphil means "cause to be clear"? What would the meaning of הבהיר be, then?

kwrandolph wrote:Then you’ll have to say that Waltke & O’Connor are a sham. I borrowed their book and read in it that they acknowledged that DSS Hebrew (texts other than copies of Tanakh) has a different grammar than does Biblical Hebrew. DSS Hebrew is the ancestor to medieval Tiberian Hebrew, the ancestor of modern Israeli Hebrew.

I'm not saying that modern and biblical Hebrew have identical syntax. We're quite aware that the vav-consecutive was lost by the time of the Second Temple. We're aware that the participle became a substitute for a present tense. We're aware that oath formulas were lost. I never made a claim to the contrary. However, anyone who knows modern Hebrew well and spends time daily reading the text of the Bible is not speaking "a different language."

kwrandolph wrote:First of all, שלך is found in other Binyamim, meaning “to throw down”. It doesn’t mean “to zoom through the air” in Biblical Hebrew. The Hiphil is used in contexts where the action is done, but not necessarily by the person who causes the action.

When you throw something, you make it fly through the air, do you not? I was not saying that השליך meant "to zoom through the air." I was trying to get to what you might think is the hiphil sense, to cause something to do something. According to Holladay, שלך is found only in the hiphil and its passive (hophal). It isn't found in other binyanim. If you claim otherwise, where do you find it?

Again, what is the difference between השליך "the threw" (caused something to fly through the air) and שלח "he sent" (caused someone/something to go somewhere) or הפך "he turned" (caused something to turn over) in terms of causation? How can hiphil be conceived of anything different than qal in these verbs?

kwrandolph wrote:Are you claiming that where the consonantal text has other Binyamim therefore those who wrote the consonantal text performed feats of creativity?

No. I'm claiming that you are trying to attach meaning that isn't there. Specifically, that the hiphil (and its passive) always bears a meaning of causation. I am not going beyond that claim. It isn't true that all hiphil verbs bear the concept of causation, though many do.

If there is a corresponding qal root, then hiphil normally takes on a causative sense. For example, יצא "he went out" versus הוציא "he caused to go out"; אכל "he ate" versus האכיל "he caused to eat"; ראה "he saw" versus הראה "he caused to see."

Similarly, hiphil verbs can be formed from nouns or adjectives to mean "become" something. For example, אדום "red" takes on a qal "to be red" and a hiphil האדים "to become red" (Isaiah 1:18). It is not "he caused something to be red." It is "to change states so as to become red," and it's intransitive. This is not included in your causative sense.

When someone makes a positive claim, to demonstrate that the claim is false, one must produce counterexamples. I've shown you counterexamples that demonstrate that your claim does not take everything into account. The reasonable thing to do at this point is to abandon the obviously false claim. Either that, or you need to account for the counterexamples and show that they actually do contain the sense of causation. Failing to account for all of the counterexamples that I've provided will allow your claim to be dismissed. That is what you must do in order to establish your claim.

kwrandolph wrote:In the consonantal text without points, the Piel is indistinguishable from the Qal except for the participles. That leads to the question, how many Piels are mispointed Qals, likewise how many Qals are mispoinnted Piels? In participles where we can distinguish the difference, there are examples of דבר in both Qal and Piel. So what exactly is the force of the Piel in Biblical Hebrew? “Intensive” is nonsense. Are there patterns with contextual clues apart of medieval Hebrew points that can tell you when to use Piel, and when to use Qal? After all, the Biblical writers knew when to use Qal and when to use Piel, do you know which rules they used?

I’d like to see your answer.

Karl W. Randolph.

You'd like to distract me from the issue at hand. I'm not interested in dealing with your idiosyncratic approach to biblical Hebrew at this point. Settle the issue at hand, and then we may go forward to this separate question.

Jason

Jason Hare wrote:I'm not saying that modern and biblical Hebrew have identical syntax. We're quite aware that the vav-consecutive was lost by the time of the Second Temple. We're aware that the participle became a substitute for a present tense. We're aware that oath formulas were lost. I never made a claim to the contrary. However, anyone who knows modern Hebrew well and spends time daily reading the text of the Bible is not speaking "a different language."

What you describe are not mere syntax differences, rather significant grammar differences. When verb forms that coded for neither tense nor aspect were changed to code for specific tenses, when a noun form is taken for present tense verb, when a common grammatical form is dropped, when vocabulary acquires new meanings—how much change do you need before you call it a different language?

Jason Hare wrote:When you throw something, you make it fly through the air, do you not?

Normally understood only when one throws something upwards.

Jason Hare wrote:I was not saying that השליך meant "to zoom through the air." I was trying to get to what you might think is the hiphil sense, to cause something to do something. According to Holladay, שלך is found only in the hiphil and its passive (hophal). It isn't found in other binyanim. If you claim otherwise, where do you find it?

Genesis 37:20, Exodus 7:10, 22:30 15:25, 32:19 — how many more examples do you want where the contexts and unpointed forms indicate that these are Qal verbs? These are simple, active actions.

If those examples are pointed as Hiphils or Hophals, those points are wrong.

Jason Hare wrote:Again, what is the difference between השליך "the threw" (caused something to fly through the air) and שלח "he sent" (caused someone/something to go somewhere) or הפך "he turned" (caused something to turn over) in terms of causation? How can hiphil be conceived of anything different than qal in these verbs?

First of all, because there are Qal examples of שלך. Secondly deal with the definitions of the verbs.

Jason Hare wrote:Similarly, hiphil verbs can be formed from nouns or adjectives to mean "become" something. For example, אדום "red" takes on a qal "to be red" and a hiphil האדים "to become red" (Isaiah 1:18). It is not "he caused something to be red." It is "to change states so as to become red," and it's intransitive. This is not included in your causative sense.

The verb אדם is found in Qal in Lamentations 4:7, listed in Lisowski’s concordance several times as Pual, so by your own standards יאדימו in Isaiah 1:18 is causative.

Jason Hare wrote:When someone makes a positive claim, to demonstrate that the claim is false, one must produce counterexamples. I've shown you counterexamples that demonstrate that your claim does not take everything into account.

Oh?

Jason Hare wrote:

kwrandolph wrote:In the consonantal text without points, the Piel is indistinguishable from the Qal except for the participles. That leads to the question, how many Piels are mispointed Qals, likewise how many Qals are mispoinnted Piels? In participles where we can distinguish the difference, there are examples of דבר in both Qal and Piel. So what exactly is the force of the Piel in Biblical Hebrew? “Intensive” is nonsense. Are there patterns with contextual clues apart of medieval Hebrew points that can tell you when to use Piel, and when to use Qal? After all, the Biblical writers knew when to use Qal and when to use Piel, do you know which rules they used?

I’d like to see your answer.

Karl W. Randolph.

You'd like to distract me from the issue at hand. I'm not interested in dealing with your idiosyncratic approach to biblical Hebrew at this point. Settle the issue at hand, and then we may go forward to this separate question.

Jason

You brought up the Piel in your previous message, I merely responded to it.

Karl W. Randolph.