kennethgreifer wrote:rakovsky wrote:He never says he or his hands are like a lion (ari), since his lexicon is always to use the word aryeh for lion.
rakovsky,
You said the author only spells "lion" with the letter hay at the end in Psalm 22, but you think the author is David. In Psalm 7:2, 17:12, and Psalm 22 the word "lion" has the hay at the end, and these psalms mention David at the beginning. Psalm 10:9 also has it, but the psalm does not say David wrote it.
David is quoted in 1 Samuel 17:34, 36, and 37 saying "lion" without the hay at the end. Does that mean these quotes are wrong or that David used the shorter spelling too?
One answer:
It is dealing with a different time period or a different author. Schoalrs recognized that Hebrew changed in the centuries. Hebrew in Job and the Torah, they say, is a bit different from Hebrew, say, in Zechariah's time. 1 Samuel is a narration of past events, like David's fate.
If someone today narrates what happened to George Washington and uses a different spelling or version of a word in paraphrasing or quoting G.Washington, it doesn't mean that the paraphrase or quote is simply wrong. It's a different lexicon.
Bill: "Please make sure you never buy used automobiles, if you can help it".
50 years later:
Bill's son: "My Dad always told me 'Never buy used cars if you can help it'".
Also, Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14 have the long form. Ezekiel 22:25 has the short form.
Amos 3:4 and 3:8 have the long spelling. Amos 3:12 and 5:19 have the short spelling of "lion."
Thanks for pointing this out. Amos the first two times says Aryeh, and the second two times
Ha-ari, "the lion".
Ha-ari is used 7 times starting with 1 Samuel:
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/haari_738.htm
Ari is used 4 times starting with Proverbs 22, but not in Psalms.
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/ari_738.htm
Ka-ari is used a total of 3-4 times: in Numbers 24:9, and then once in Psalm 22(in question), then Isaiah 38 and Ezekiel 22.
Me-Ari is used in Judges once.
Wa-kari (Like a lion) is in Numbers 23:24.
One conclusion could be that this is could be a very rare term in David's time of writing or earlier, the two exceptions being in Numbers 23-24. Later the term got more common and the later prophets Amos and Ezekiel used both Ari and Aryeh, like how American poets and writers could use older terms (eg. thy and you, car and automobile) in their work.
rakovsky, did you think of this argument or did you read it somewhere?
Good question. I probably did read it somewhere. Others noticed it too.
the usual word for lion in Hebrew is ‘aryeh’ spelt differently from ‘ari’. The word aryeh with its usual form is found in verse 13 of Psalm 22.
http://messiahfactor.com/page65.html
Gleason Archer, professor of Old Testament and Semitic studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, writes,
" . . . we find in the MT of Psalm 22:17 (16 Eng.) the strange phrase "like the lion my hands and my feet" (kaari yaday we raglay) in a context that reads "dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men have encircled me- like the lion my hands and my feet!" This really makes no sense, for lions do not surround the feet of their victims. Rather, they pounce on them and bite them through with their teeth.
Furthermore, this spelling of the word "lion" (ari) is rendered more doubtful by the fact that in v.13 (14MT) the word "lion" appears in the normal way 'aryeh. it is most unlikely that the author would have used used two different spellings of the same word within three verses of each other.
Far more likely is the reading supported by most of the versions: ka'ru (They [i.e. the dogs or evildoers] have pierced" my hands and my feet). This involves merely reading the final letter yodh as a waw, which would make it the past tense of a third person plural verb. This is apparently what the LXX read, for oryxan ("they have bored through") reflects a a karu from the verb kur ("pierce, dig through"). The Vulgate conforms to this with foderunt ("They have dug through"). The Syriac Peshitta has baz'w, which means "they have pierced/penetrated." Probably the ' (aleph) in ka'ru represents a mere vowel lengthener that occasionally appears in the Hasmonean manuscripts such as 1QIsa and the sectarian literature of the second century B.C."
Dr. Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, pg. 37
...
There is an occurrence in Rabbinic literature reading the contested word ka'ari/ka'aru as a verb. However, it would not be conclusive in this instance, because hermeneutic principles exercised in midrashic eisegesis sometimes play with the literal reading of the text
http://netzarifaith.ning.com/forum/topi ... orsaken-me
"it's very unlikely that the Psalm's author would change from the normal Hebrew spelling for the word "lion", aryeh in v. 13 to ari in v. 16."
~Eric Snow,
A Zeal for God Not According to Knowledge: A Refutation of Judaism's Arguments Against Christianity
"The use of the word lion “ari” in rest of the Tehillim lacks the definite article and is spelled “ARYEH” not “ARI”."
The Dead Sea Scrolls at Khirbet Qumran (
4QPs and 5/6HeVPS) read “they pierced” even though they use different spellings.
The Scroll 4QPs uses the Hebrew word KARU (Kaf-Resh-Vav) and the 5/6HeVPs uses KA’ARU (Kaf-Alef-Resh- Vav). Karu is the qal perfect 3 rd person plural form of KARAH or KUR and means “to dig, excavate, bore through, and pierce”. There are
four other manuscripts that use this word and one of them is 2,050 years old and was found at Qumran.
http://www.bnaiavraham.net/media/d263d7 ... ffe906.pdf
It would be interesting to know more about this. It sounds like he is claiming that some of the other DSS are readable and say KRU here.
He also brings up a good point:
The 5/6HeVPs manuscript at Qumran shows some Aramaic influence. It dates 100 years later than the other manuscript. This form of the word- KA’ARU- is found in seven versions of the Masoretic text. Many Anti-missionaries will claim that KA’ARU is not even a Hebrew word. I ask them the question, “How then did it show up in seven other versions of the Masoretic texts? Why did the Jewish scribes copy this word into the text?” They fail to realize (or hope you do not understand) that many words in Hebrew, as with English, may have more than one spelling.
http://www.bnaiavraham.net/media/d263d7 ... ffe906.pdf
Why didn't those five Masoretic "correct" Ka'aru into Ka Ari if they would have known there was supposed to be a yod here and made such corrections elsewhere? It looks like they were aware of the issue and considered the text to in fact say Ka'aru with a waw.
kennethgreifer wrote:
What does all of this mean?
Other than the verse in question in Psalm 22:
Psalms 7, 10 and 17 say Ka Aryeh when the writer wants to say Like a Lion.
The Psalms never use the word Ari.
David does use the verb Karah in Psalm 40:6 metaphorically about the human body.
Psalm 57 and Psalm 119 use Karu ("they dig")
Psalm 7 and 94 use Karah the verb
So the conclusion is that according to the lexicon or vocabulary in the Psalms, Ari and Ka'Ari would be singular exceptions and aberrations. If David/the Psalmist wanted to say "like a lion", his normal way of speaking would be "Ka Aryeh".
Meanwhile, Karu, Karah, Karu are normal for the Psalmist, including to talk about actions onto body parts.
Based on the writer's lexicon, including in Psalm 22 itself, he would probably say Karu, not Ka'ari.
Another possibility, working on the assumption of use of the hypothetical Ari in Chp 22:
While some lions are mentioned in Psalm 22 in a negative way (along with dogs) the Hebrew for them is the aryeh form rather than ari. Thus the lion here which reminds us moderns of a kind of Aslan figure and may allude to the story in antiquity of Apion’s “Androcles and the Lion” and Aesop’s fable of the “Lion and the Mouse”. Both these stories tell of a Lion with a thorn piercing his paw (foot) and a kind one digging it out of its foot. These common tales may have been appealing to Jews of the Roman period and the rabbis may have used ka’ari as an alternative reading and then later, due to the polemical debates between Jews and Christians, ka’ari (like a lion) became the preferred reading of the Jewish community. It is common in Jewish rabbinic discussions to read certain words in the Hebrew texts differently and give a deeper meaning by the use of these alternative readings. [23]
NOTE 23:[SEE: Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, (California; Standford University Press; 2009).]
http://brothergilbertpontificates.blogs ... rtain.html