Another question from the About page: The Twelve Prophets . I find it strange that the abbreviation for these books is given as תרי עשר Why are the 12 called 10? Please could you say more about the grammar of this phrase. Thanks The word תרי (trei) is actually Aramaic for “two,” so תרי עשר…
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Psalm 2:2 exhibits particularly clever structure, with meanings that form chiasmus and word combinations that pattern in straight parallelism. The Hebrew reads: yityats’vu malchei erets//v’roznim nosdu yachdav. Yityatsvu means the about same thing as nosdu yachdav, and malchei eretz is like roznim. That’s the chiasmus. But equally, each line has three words, and both times…
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Even though “part” means roughly the same thing as “portion,” and “parcel” means “division,” “part and parcel” cannot equally be phrased, “portion and division.” Yet when I read many Bible translations, I feel like exactly that sort of error has taken place. The phrase “Tohu and vohu” in Genesis receives lots of attention, because the…
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