Also from the About page: Here is a question — I have explored the usage of ish and ishah in Ruth (here) and I was surprised to see in 3.14: vatakom b’terem yakir ish et-rei’eihu vayomer al-yivada ki-va’a ha-isha ha-goren and she rose before a man could recognize his friend and he said — let…
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From the About page: I have a question about Exodus 2:2. What does it mean that she saw that baby Moses was tov? Could it be a statement of affection, the way we refer to children and pets as “good?” Or does “seeing that…good” simply echo Genesis 1? Interesting question. I don’t think it’s an…
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And one more from the about page: Is Genesis 4:7, the first words, halo im-teitiv s’eit, an example of the idiom of a condition with antecedent but no stated consequence? Would the last of the words apply to Cain (as KJV implies) or to Cain’s offering (JPS)? Genesis 4:7 is clearly poetry, so we shouldn’t…
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Also from the about page: Is it true that in Greek they didn’t have multiple words that meant the same thing or one word that meant multiple things? More clearly — that every word had only one meaning and each thing/idea had only one word for it. Thanks! Thanks for the question, which I think…
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From the about page: Ooh, let me be number eleven! I’d like to formally ask about the possible meanings of Iscariot. Although I highly doubt it’s actually related to the Latin sicarius (assassin), I’ve heard that as an unlikely though interesting theory. What explanation(s) of that surname/eponym do you find plausible? As usual, I’ll start…
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From the about page comes this question: Here is something I ignored when I translated Job and I don’t think I should have. In chapter 1 we get the b’nei ha-elohim. In chapter 38 we get the b’nei elohim without the definite article. I am thinking that the first should be the children (or sons)…
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Again from the about page: What’s going on with the pronominal suffixes in Psalm 103 3-8? I can’t find -ki as a pronominal suffix in any of my grammar books — neither singular nor plural! Good question. The suffix -ki (also spelled -chi) is a variant form of -k, and it means “your (sng, f).”…
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Cameron asks via the About page whether “until everything is accomplished” (eos an panta genetai) in Matthew 5:18 could be punctuated as part of Matthew 5:19, the original being unversified and unpunctuated. That is, could the text read: I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least…
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Dannii asks on the About page: In Galatians 3:16 Paul makes an essentially linguistic argument about Genesis 22:18. Does the Hebrew word for ‘seed’ have a similar range of meanings as the English word? Paul’s argument feels strange in English because when ‘seed’ is used to mean descendants it is a non-count noun. Is the…
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