In this paper I reexamine three expressions in Amos’ visions: לָרִב בָּאֵשׁ (Am 7:4), אֲנָךְ (Am 7:7-8), and קֵץ/קַיץִ (Am 8:1-2). I suggest to understand לָרִב בָּאֵשׁ in Am 7:4 ‘to inundate with fire’ postulating the root ריב ii (parallel to רבב) ‘to bring much water’, etymologically and literarily connecting this expression to the Meribah account. For אֲנךְָ in Am 7:7-8 I substantiate the word-play that incorporates an allusion to 1cs personal pronoun, investigating the involved dialectal Northern Hebrew phenomena in their wider North-West Semitic context: the final vowel reduction in *ˀanāku and the phonetic shifts ō > ū > ī, á > o, and ś > š. For the word-play קֵץ/קַיִץ in Am 8:1-2 I elaborate on its phonetic properties, concentrating on the word-final gemination and the short vowel quality in the lexeme *qiṣṣ. The latter case allows postulating the typological path of the corresponding phonetic development: the diphthong contraction → í > ē in an originally open syllable → í // é allophonism in a double closed syllable → final gemination simplification. As a result, several isoglosses that explicitly separate between Northern and Southern dialects of Hebrew are firmly established: the shorter form of 1cs pronoun ˀanōk vs ˀanōkī and the “Phoenician shift”. The conclusion is that the Northern dialect is close to the Canaanite innovative center, while the Southern dialect represents the conservative periphery.
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See Paul 1991:230-232. This interpretation implies a legal contest between the Lord and his people and the punishment by fire: the form רִב (sporadically written defectively) is infinitive qal of the root רי"ב “to strive, struggle”.
See Krenkel 1866:271, Hillers 1964 and others (listed in Paul 1991:231, note 44); this reading is supported by Jeremias 1998:123 and by Mays 1969:130. For the reading לרבֹ אֵשׁ “a mighty fire”, see Ehrlich 1908-1914, vol. 5:248. This reading establishes a connection between the case under discussion and the noun רְבִיבִים ‘strong rain’, usually pluralia tantum in Hebrew. Also it is worth mentioning that a slight re-vocalization would end up with the form of infinitive Qal of the root רבב ‘be much’ which is also associated with water abundance: לָרֹב בָּאֵשׁ ‘to be strong, abundant with fire”; cf. Ehrlich 1908-1914, 5:248 but with a different morphological parsing and translation.
See Paul 1991:232 and cf. in Isa 51:9-10. For a comprehensive treatment of this literary-mythological motive see Ayali-Darshan 2011.
Radine 2010:144 note 81; 150; see also Montgomery 1904.
Landsberger 1965. For this reading of אֲנָךְ see Beyerlin 1988 and cf. also Jeremias 1998:131, especially note 19 with a comprehensive review of the research. The hinted symbolism that Jeremias suggests is the one of weapon and sword. Paul insisted on the interpretation of אֲנָךְ as ‘tin’, abandoned the symbolism of the divine judgment, and pointed to the symbolic meaning of softness instead; see Paul 1991:233-235; cf. also Uehlinger 1989 on the imagery of wall in the vision.
Cf. Paul 1996:235: “The probability still very likely exists that there is more in this vision (a possible double entendre of אֲנָךְ?) than meets the eye, and thus it is no wonder that the prophet, as well as his exegetes, remains baffled by its symbolism.” A parallel, almost identical, structure of these two visions is reliably established in the research; see the review in Novick 2008. Novick 2008:120-122 claims that both cases of word-play in the text provoke an unwilling uttering by the prophet of the divine indictment, thus making it irreversible. The parallel structure of the third and fourth visions is not substantiated in Bergler 2000.
Novick 2008; see Cooper 1997:16-18 and Horst 1961:193-205 who suggested his reading as an emendation; see also Jeremias 1998:132-133 with the bibliographic review on both suggestions.
See also Ouellette 1973 and Gese 1981. Novick seems to underestimate the fact that in the latter cases the dissimilation of an emphatic occurred in the presence of other emphatics and, strikingly, only in the first radical; see Novick 2008:126 note 3. He further stipulates that the trio אנח // אנק // אנך can be illustrated by trios נשב // נשם // נשף ‘breath’ and עלץ // עלז // עלס ‘rejoice’, but ignores cases of dissimilation of emphatics in the closeness of laryngeals such as תעה—טעה “error”, שׁחת—שׁחט “destroy”.
See Rudolf 1971:235 and the discussion in Cooper 1997:19-20.
See Prätorius 1915:23 “Siehe ich will das Ich mitten in mein Volk Israel stellen;” cf. also Coote 1981:92-93. An independent 1cs personal pronoun in the object position has no comparative Semitic parallels (Akkadian has a separate accusative pronominal paradigm different from a nominative paradigm; see von gag: 51; Lipinski 1997:300; Weninger 2013:169). The same line of interpretation is maintained in Campos 2011, although due to several cases of the pronoun אָנֹכִי “I” used by the prophet in self-reference in chapter 8, she understands the 1cs independent pronoun in Amos 7:8 as addressee-referred; Campos 2011: 20: “It is revealed to Amos in the vision that he himself is the tin wall that yhwh is setting in order to prophesy to his people.” The syntax of the first-person pronoun in reference to the addressee remains obscure to me.
See Cooper 1997:20; he is based on Greenberg 1957 (cf. also Baumgarten 1992).
See Novick 2008:123-125, who also substantiate an alternative reading involving haplography, הִנְנִי שָׂם שְׁמִי אֲנָךְ בְּקֶרֶב עַמִּי יִשְׂרָאֵל “Behold I am setting my very name in the midst of my people Israel”.
See Kutscher 1961:34, Wolters 1988, and cf. the discussion in Paul 1991:254 note 8. Novick 2008:119-120 confirms the common theory concerning the phonetic setting of the pun in the forth vision (קַיִץ-קֵץ), entrenched in the northern dialectal pronunciation of Hebrew קַיִץ “summer” as qêṣ due to the diphthong contraction.
See Lipinski 1997:155. 157, Steiner 2008 (especially p. 73 note 3 for the bibliographic review), Novick 2008:119 note 8., and Rendburg 1990.
See Aartun 1991:140-142; the meaning ‘want, need’ is attested for the root ryb in Arabic, see Lane 1984:1198. However, the meaning ‘tremble, quake (about earth)’ attested in Akkadian râbu I will better fit the powers of Baal as a storm god. With this etymology the Ugaritic Rb (a symbolic name of a parent of Ṭly, Baal’s daughter) turns out to be a cognate of Hebrew Rahab (רַהַב), a mythological sea monster defeated by the Lord (cf. in Is 30:7, 51:9; Ps 87:4, 89:11; Job 9:13. 26:12); on the secondary character of h in this root see below. This possible etymological link remains outside the scope of the present essay.
See Beeston 1982:112-114. In addition, the lexeme rb can mean ‘measurement unit’ in Minaic or “lord (of Jews)” in Sabaic; rby is attested for ‘priest’ in Qatabanic. Beeston 1982:114 suggests rbw verb imperfective yrbwn (R4646/18), farm, cultivate land (Jry Him 1.98 n. 28), but Sima 2000:311 (footnote 30) suggests a very different interpretation for this word: this is an adverb or a preposition ‘together with’, probably derived from the root rby ‘be many’. (I thank Peter Stein who helped me to find the latter reference).
See Leslau 1991:461; he compares to Arabic rabba ‘arrange’, but cf. Lane 1984:993 rˀb ‘repair, mend”. Cf. also in Arabic rbˀ ‘be high, overlook’ (Lane 1984:1007)’. The status of this root remains obscure to me.
Cf. Leslau 1991:476 and he compares to Arabic rāba (rwb) “be perplexed”, see Lane 1984:1175 rwb ‘become thick, coagulate’.
See Lane 1984:1175 and cf. Akkadian râbui (< ra’ābu) ‘tremble, quake’, Geez rawaba “become muddy”, and Aramaic רהב. According to the data collected from Geez and Classical Arabic this root is genuinely rwb.
Cf. Lane 1984:1002.
See Lane 1984:1005 and cf. also another derivative rabāb ‘clouds’.
Lane 1984:1007.
According to Müller 2012: “The name has been transmitted in two forms in the ancient South Arabian inscriptions. The early inscriptions up to the 2nd century ad have always the form mryb; in later attestations, the form mrb appears;” cf. also: “For the pronunciation of mryb as Maryab, reference can be made to the rendering by ancient authors: Μαρίαβα as Μητρόπολις in Strabo, xvi, 4, 768, after Erastosthenes, and ibid., xvi, 4,778, after Artemidoros, as well as Μαρούαβα, ibid., xvi, 4, 782.”
See Cooper 1997:18, note 21; cf. Krahmalkov 2001:39; cf. Garr 1985:79; cf. also Segert 1976:95.
See Garr 1985:75; Segert 1961:217, Speiser 1925-26:359.
See Segert 1976:75; Lipinski 1997: 157; Krahmalkov 2001: 30-31; cf. also Kerr 2010:85. According to Rendsburg 2002:11 the shift ō > ū was typical for Northern Hebrew, particularly in the case in Hos 7:14: yāšûrû (from the root šrr, not šwr); as for Samaritan Hebrew cf. Ben-Hayyim 2000:44.
Cf. Sznycer 1967:151; see also the discussion in Kerr 2010:84-85; cf. also Fox 1996.
See Krahmalkov 2001:39-40. However the form ˀanī is practically very rare in Phoenician; see further criticism of this view in Kerr 2010:86.
See Kerr 2010:86. Since the final vowel apocope could have preceded the shift ō / ū > ī in the word-middle position, the vowel harmony seems less plausible and Sznycer’s suggestion of the raising of ū in this and other cases is more realistic. According to Segert 1976:74 the vowel /u/ in closed stressed syllable tended in later Punic toward ü. See also Friedrich and Röllig 1999:42 for this sporadic shift (o/ō > œ or e). According to Fox 1996:41-43, in Phoenician the Canaanite ō > u and the Canaanite u > ü > i. In his view these are two different shifts working on different reconstructed phonemes; Fox did not discuss the cases where these two shifts could have worked together enabling the path ō > u > ü > i.
See Harris 1939:29-32, Garr 1985:35-40.
See Lipinski 1997:155; cf. Gröndahl 1967, Watson 1990-2003; and see the discussion in Steiner 2008:79.
See Garr 1985:38-39.
See Lipinski 1997:155-157, Friedrich and Röllig 1999:44: for cases of ay > ī in unstressed position in Phoenician-Punic cf. Βυτυλλιον < *bytˀl, “House of El” as contra σαµηµ /šamēm/, “heavens” under the stress in Phoenician; cf. also Βῆτα, Bi-ti-ru-me for bt ‘house’; ζῆτα for zt ‘olive’, and, perhaps, the personal name I Me/Mi-tu-ru for Mtr (< root ytr) for the expected ay > ê under the stress and ay > ī in unstressed position; cf. Steiner 2008.
Cf. Lipinski 1997:155; according to Steiner 2008:74 note 8 the character ˁ in the Punic writing Bytˁn denote a/ā vowel (cf. Kerr 2010:39-42), but according to Kerr 2010:42-43 it can sporadically denote other vowels, including i. Lipinski 1997:155 mentions one more example: i-nu < *yyn, “wine” in Canaanite, but I could not find the source for this case. According to Krahmalkov 2001:30, “sometimes the contracted diphthong ê is found lowered to ī,” also under the stress, cf. Punic bit “house”, but the case is very obscure (Poen. 941A). Friedrich and Röllig 1999:44 add examples Bīt-zi-it-ti and In-ím-me—geographic names with zt ‘olive’ and ˁn ‘eyes’ with the dual ending under the stress correspondingly, the spelling in cuneiform however does not give a decisive indication of either /i/ of /e/ quality of the vowel.
See Ben-Hayyim 2000:65: bit, zit, īn, īl.
See Harris 1939:76 (but cf. Harris 1941:145); Bergsträsser 1918-1929:§24e; Dolgopolsky 1999:80-81. According to Blau 2010:100 the word-final gemination under the stress did not drop before the diphthongs contraction, otherwise: *qáww ‘line’ > *qáw > *qô.
See Dotan 1976:97. Cf. also the Punic spelling of the preposition ett / itt ‘with’ in Poen. 947P, 947A.
See Kutscher 1968-69:96, Fox 1996:39, and cf. the discussion below.
See Joüon and Muraoka 2006:§18b; Yuditsky 2013.
See Sivan 1984:11, 67-69 and Huehnergard 1987:259-263, 304-307.
See Friedrich and Röllig 1999:43; Krahmalkov 2001:29-30.
Thus also Hackett 2008:88; in this case the quality and quantity of this ē was equal to ê.
See Segert 1997:63 and Friedrich and Röllig 1999:43. As Fox 1996:39 convincingly demonstrated, the Phoenician Shift (á > ā > ɔ > o in his reconstruction) did not operate in double closed syllables including geminate (namely in qatl / qall nouns): cf. the feminine form Χουσαρτ for kušart discussed above.
See Blau 1996:72-76 and cf. the discussion above.
See Birkeland 1940:31 and cf. Rabin 1960:192. According to Bauer and Leander 1922:196h in such cases the shift i > e preceded the Philippi’s Law.
Lambdim 1985:142 claims that at the initial stage short i shifted into short e: i > e in a doubly close syllable (including gemination), and then the subsequent simplification of the final consonant occurred. Only in Tiberian Hebrew this short e shifted into long ē under the stress in a monosyllabic word.
Cf. Grabbe 2001:114-115.
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In this paper I reexamine three expressions in Amos’ visions: לָרִב בָּאֵשׁ (Am 7:4), אֲנָךְ (Am 7:7-8), and קֵץ/קַיץִ (Am 8:1-2). I suggest to understand לָרִב בָּאֵשׁ in Am 7:4 ‘to inundate with fire’ postulating the root ריב ii (parallel to רבב) ‘to bring much water’, etymologically and literarily connecting this expression to the Meribah account. For אֲנךְָ in Am 7:7-8 I substantiate the word-play that incorporates an allusion to 1cs personal pronoun, investigating the involved dialectal Northern Hebrew phenomena in their wider North-West Semitic context: the final vowel reduction in *ˀanāku and the phonetic shifts ō > ū > ī, á > o, and ś > š. For the word-play קֵץ/קַיִץ in Am 8:1-2 I elaborate on its phonetic properties, concentrating on the word-final gemination and the short vowel quality in the lexeme *qiṣṣ. The latter case allows postulating the typological path of the corresponding phonetic development: the diphthong contraction → í > ē in an originally open syllable → í // é allophonism in a double closed syllable → final gemination simplification. As a result, several isoglosses that explicitly separate between Northern and Southern dialects of Hebrew are firmly established: the shorter form of 1cs pronoun ˀanōk vs ˀanōkī and the “Phoenician shift”. The conclusion is that the Northern dialect is close to the Canaanite innovative center, while the Southern dialect represents the conservative periphery.
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