Thu Jun 6 09:52:58 1996

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From: "James R. Adair" 
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Subject: Re: TC article (fwd)
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I am forwarding this message from Ioudaios, written by Judith Romney 
Wegner, to the tc-list, since it deals with the newest article to appear 
in TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism.  Perhaps some on the list 
would like to comment (especially Dave Washburn)?

Jimmy Adair
General Editor of TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu/scripts/TC/TC.html <-----


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 96 19:10:41 EDT
From: PWEGNER@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU
To: First Century Judaism Discussion Forum 
Subject: Re: TC article



----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>2 Sam 19:2 is unusual, but
commentators generally explain it simply as a variation from the norm, if
they treat it at all. Others follow the lead of two MT mss, P, and T and
repoint the second verb as a participle. However, the lack of any true
parallel to this structure elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible raises the
possibility of an alternative explanation: the waw-consecutive phrase is
not part of the direct speech, but rather continues the flow of the
narrative.<

That's ingenious, but I'm not sure it would work UNLESS you are making
Joab (rather than the king) the subject of wa-yit'abbel, thus:  And Joab was
informed, "Look, the king is weeping." So he [Joab] mourned Absalom [likewise].
In other words, upon discovering that the king had, as it were, changed his
stance towards Absalom (now that things had gone too far and it was too late)
Joab deemed it prudent to appear pretty upset about what had transpired.

But if you want it to mean: And Joab was informed, "Look, the king is weeping."
And the King mourned Absalom...I don't think that would work, because taking
the sentence as a whole, it is far more natural for wa-yit'abbel to refer back
to Joab than  to the king (if you assume that *hinneh hamelekh  bokheh* is the
only part of the sentence that is in indirect speech).
    In order to do what you want, I think the text would need to have read:
wa-yit'abbel ha-melekh 'al Absalom.

Another possibility: since *bokheh*, though pointed as present participle, is
written *Xaser* rather than *male'*, it could equally well be vocalized as
*bakhah* -- in which case we would be back to the position that it is all
part of the direct speech after all. "Look, the king has been weeping  and
mourning for Absalom  (*bakhah wa-yit'abbel* is a quite natural construction.)

I suppose *bokheh* was vocalized that way because of the preceding *hinneh*,
but I don't think *hinneh* would absolutely require this.

New JPS (I now see) translates it pretty much the way I just did, but by the
device of using indirect speech:  "Joab was told that the king WAS weeping
and mourning over Absalom."  Of course, if you rendered that back into direct
speech you'd have "IS weeping and mourning",  as you indicated. But it's also
quite reasonable to amend *wa-yit'abbel* to *u-mit'abbel* even though this
means replacing a yod with a mem, because in ancient Hebrew script, it happens
that the yod was a much larger letter, and looked very much like the ancient
Hebrew mem (wish I could do this on e-mail, but you can find the chart in the
Encyclopedia Britannica article on "Alphabet").

Judith Romney Wegner, Providence

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