kennethgreifer wrote:What is your proof that David knew the verb kaaru with an alef or do you mean that a later scribe added the alef to the word? I don't know what you mean when you say that alef was added to some words. Do you mean the writer of Psalm 22 added it or a later scribe added it?
Kenneth Greifer
See my message two places above.
David could have written KRU like two Masoretic texts say and then later due to Aramaic influence some other texts added an A per the known practice.
Or David could have written Kaaru adding A as per the known Hebrew practice of adding vowels. Doing this he could have been making a double entendre (Like a lion
and they gouged). It's quite interesting that in Hebrew in Judaism the letters are sometimes even drawn in aberrational ways, as if they have a hidden meaning.
From my website:
Sometimes ancient Hebrew an aleph to words as an alternate spelling. Hebrew professor James Price gives examples from Hebrew of other word variants with an added “aleph” (which he writes as ‘ instead of ‘a): "bo'r, bor (pit, cistern) from the verb bur (dig);
da'g, dag (fish) from the verb dug (fish for);
la't, lat (secrecy) from the verb lut (be secret); m'um, mum (blemish); n'od, nod (skin);
q'am, qam (he arose);
ra'sh, rash (poor) from the verb rush (be poor);" (James Price, Response to a Skeptic,
http://www.messianicart.com/chazak/yesh ... keptic.htm)
The scholars Keil and Delitzsch also note that Zechariah 14:10 and Daniel 7:16 have added alephs in the words
ra’ama and ka’amaiya. (Keil and Delitzsch, "Commentary on the Old Testament", Volume 5, page 319).
”The long-standing consensus has been that ka'aru is the Hasmonean-era spelling of the Hebrew word karu (כרו), which means "they have dug." At this time in history, spelling was not standardized, and Hebrew was heavily influenced by its sister language Aramaic, which could introduce the letter aleph.” (Ruben Barrett, Bible Q&A: Psalm 22,
http://www.hadavar.net/articles/45-bibl ... tions.html).
I don't want to make too big an issue out of the letter drawing issue and cryptic meanings - I don't see it as essential, but it's true that in Hebrew the letters are considered to have special cryptic meanings.
In David's time, the neighboring Egyptian empire used a pictoral based alphabet, and so did Israel, called Paleo-Hebrew. I think since then Israel switched to the "Assyrian" script for Hebrew, which we have today. In Egyptian, for example, each letter referred to a word. NTR (meaning God or divinity) spelled out would be Water + Bread + Mouth (it looked a bit like w ^ o ). A common opinion is that NTR also refers to the essential animating life force. It's a personal guess that water and bread and mouth could be referring to eating to live.
To give you an example of what I am talking about with Hebrew, note the hooks on the Shin Ш on the Torah.
When we look at words in the Torah scroll, we notice unusual decorations on the letters.
What are they? Why are they there? A very few seconds’ thought tells us that they are not vowels or cantillation, the more usual “decorations” of Hebrew letters.
...
Three tagin per hey, see? This doesn’t happen on all heys, nor yet on all instances of YHVH–just on certain ones. Why?
One scholar explains: There are tagin on the Name to indicate that this is the crowned, distinguished Name, the superior, explicit Name.
http://hasoferet.com/cbh/2012/04/01/tag ... the-torah/
The Chabad website explains:
The letter shin actually has four different forms. There’s a shin with a dot above the right column,a shin with a dot above the left column, a shin with four columns instead of three, and finally a silent shin. When the dot is on the right, the shin emphasizes Chessed, the concept of kindness. When the dot is on the left, the shin (pronounced “sin”) emphasizes the aspect of judgment or severity. These two forms are illustrated by the words shaar and sei’ar. The shin of the word shaar (gate) has its point on the right, שׁער,as a gate allows people to pass in and out, an aspect of openness or chessed. This shin is full of energy, potential and benevolence.
If we switch the shin’s dot to the left side, which is Gevurah (i.e., contraction), the resulting word is sei’ar, שׂער,or hair. Hair has the properties of life, but a life-force that is tremendously diminished or weak. One can pull out or cut a strand of hair and not feel any pain, unlike when one cuts a finger or other part of the body. A hair is rooted in a follicle, a concentrated, restricted opening. We thus say that the shin with a point on the left side represents severity and constraint.
The shin with four columns is found on the tefillin that is worn on the head. One side of the head tefillin has a shin with three lines and the other has one with four lines. In his personal notes7 the Rebbe offers two reasons for this. First, the four-lined shin is the shin of the Luchos, the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. The four lines represent the awesomeness and holiness of the engraving of G‑d’s word into physical stone. To visualize this, imagine the three lines of the shin etched into stone. If you focus on the stone that remains around the shin, there will be four columns. These are the four lines of this form of the shin. They are the wake, the reflected light of the Luchos.
Here is a page about the four pronged aberrational Shin used in Tefillim:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Gramma ... /shin.html
This happens with WAW too sometimes. In Numbers 25:12, the Waw is intentionally written as broken. (
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Gramma ... v/vav.html)
Turning to the letters in Psalm 22, an Interesting thing is that the letter Yod refers to the hand in Hebrew, and Waw refers to a nail or hook.
So if we are sure that it was Ka Aru, then is this a reference to a lion with a nail/hook(waw) attacking the hands?
The writer below sees such a connection in the U of Karu:
https://onedaringjew.wordpress.com/2010 ... to-my-hand
He brings up an interesting issue. In Hebrew, the H was meant to refer to "behold" or "look".
The original pictograph for this letter is
, a man standing with his arms raised up. The Modern Hebrew, and original name for this letter, is hey, a Hebrew word meaning "behold," as when looking at a great sight. This word can also mean "breath" or "sigh," as one does when looking at a great sight. The meaning of the letter is behold
, look, breath, sigh, reveal and revelation from the idea of revealing a great sight by pointing it out.
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/alphabet_letters_hey.html
So the inner meaning of the Hebrew letters in the Tetragrammaton Y H W H, drawn with a man holding up his arms, is:
THE ARM _ BEHOLD _ THE NAIL _ BEHOLD
That sounds kind of weird, doesn't it? Where does the Bible ever say God is pierced?
Zechariah 12 comes to mind as a possibility:
8 In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
My normal assumption would be that it is not talking about the inhabitants of Jerusalem looking at a pierced God.
Back in Genesis, after God visited Abraham in the form of three beings, people in Sodom and Gomorrah tried to abuse two of those beings of God staying there, but Lot protected them. So I guess within the Biblical mindset it's rationally conceivable. But it would be very unusual.
Going strictly by the Grammar in Zech 12, we have:
They[inhabitants of jerusalem] shall look
Hibbitu
upon me
e lay
,
et
whom
asher
they have pierced
daqaru
and they shall mourn
sapadu
for him/them [3rd person pronoun]
a law
I liked this listing of all times when "Et Asher" is used in the Tanakh:
http://williamwelty.com/docs_et-asher.htm
The writer persuasively discusses opposes claims, the JPS translation "upon me, because of those whom they thrust through", and the pre-Christian LXX translation of "upon me, the man whom they pierced".