The Meaning and Syntax of taʿărōg


The word taʿărōg, which appears three times in the Hebrew Bible, has been traditionally interpreted as a third-person feminine form. This article proposes that it instead be treated as a second-person masculine form, and that the two verses in which it appears be re-analysed accordingly.

Wilde's article in his commentary on Job but silently corrected it, making the emended verse read "longing, they go without clothes."3 Stec then reproduced Clines' paraphrase in his entry for the DCH on ‫,ערג‬ but apparently mistook the emendation for the Masoretic text. The supposed fourth attestation of ‫ערג‬ is thus a garbled paraphrase of a charitable reworking of a garbled conjecture. It can be safely disregarded.) In all three genuine attestations, the word takes the singular imperfect form ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫ּת‬ (spelt defectively in the latter verse). Here it is in Joel 1:20: The earliest attested translations of ‫תערוג‬ seem to be guesses informed by these contexts. Joel 1:20 was rendered in the LXX like this: καὶ τὰ κτήνη τοῦ πεδίου ἀνέβλεψαν πρὸς σέ, ὅτι ἐξηράνθησαν ἀφέσεις ὑδάτων καὶ πῦρ κατέφαγεν τὰ ὡραῖα τῆς ἐρήμου.
Similarly, the tenth-century grammarian Dunash ben Labrat glossed ‫ערג‬ contextually as "to cry out," making it a specialized synonym of ‫.קרא‬ Aquila, for his part, used etymology rather than context to derive the meaning of ‫.ערג‬ He translated ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫ּת‬ at Joel 1:20 as ἐπρασιώθη, and ‫ֹג‬ ‫ר‬ ‫עֲ‬ ‫ּתַ‬ ‫ל‬ ‫ּיָ‬ ‫אַ‬ ‫ּכְ‬ at Ps 42:2 The Meaning and Syntax of ta ʿ ărōg Vetus Testamentum (2021) 1-8 as ὡς αὐλὼν πεπρασιασμένος.4 The basis of these translations was the resemblance between ‫ֹג‬ ‫ר‬ ‫עֲ‬ ‫ּתַ‬ and another rare word, ‫ה‬ ‫רּוגַ‬ ‫5.עֲ‬ (The neologisms ἐπρασιώθη and πεπρασιασμένος are derivatives of πρασιά, "planting bed," which Aquila had used to translate ‫ה‬ ‫רּוגַ‬ ‫עֲ‬ wherever it appeared.) Later, Jerome-and thus the whole Latin tradition in the case of Joel 1:20-followed Aquila for the translation of these verses.6 Probably the word was just as mysterious to all of these pre-modern translators as it is to us. Scholars since the mid-seventeenth century have tried to establish the meaning of ‫ערג‬ from Semitic cognates. In 1648, Louis de Dieu observed that ዐረገ in Ethiopic and ‫ج‬ � ‫ر‬ ‫ع‬ � in Arabic both mean "to go up," and that Ps 42:2 could therefore be translated "sicut cerva ascendit ad decursus aquarum, sic anima mea ascendit ad te."7 In 1967 Edward Ullendorff, believing that he was making an innovative application of his learning in Geʿez, unwittingly recapitulated de Dieu's conjecture.8 Two decades after it appeared, Samuel Bochart threw out de Dieu's translation on the grounds that a beast goes down, not up, to water.9 In its place he cautiously endorsed the opinion of Dunash that ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫ּת‬ referred to a deer's cries, with the reservation that it could not refer only to deer, since at Joel 1:20 it takes all of the beasts of the field for its subject. Bochart also cited the myth of the huntress Argê, turned into a deer by the sun-god, and mused that her name was derivable from ‫01.ערג‬ In 1669, Johannes Coccejus speculated that ‫ערג‬ was a derivative or a relative of ‫,ערך‬ with the meaning "to set out [a complaint]," as at Ps 5:4. Hence Ps 42:2 was presumably to be read "as a deer complains for the riverbeds…," and Joel 1:20 "as the beasts of the field complain …"11 In the same year, Edmund Castell provided a list of cognates to ‫ערג‬ from Geʿez and Arabic. From then on, any scholar could review the variety of meanings associated with both ዐረገ and ‫ج‬ � ‫ر‬ ‫ع‬ � . Castell himself did not con- Such was early-modern learning on the root ‫.ערג‬ Wilhelm Gesenius' muchcited dictionary entries were no more than résumés of this scholarship. He endorsed de Dieu's opinion and glossed ‫ערג‬ as "aufsteigen," but posited that ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫ּת‬ is to be taken in a tropical sense of longing, as the LXX had suggested. As for ‫ה‬ ‫רּוגַ‬ ‫,עֲ‬ he deprecated Aquila's translation "planting-bed" and cited Michaelis's conjecture with approval.14 Joshua Blau, departing from the tradition that Gesenius had transmitted, insisted on "to incline" as the basic meaning of ‫51.ערג‬ He observed that the Arabic G-stem verb َ ‫ج‬ � َ ‫ر‬ َ ‫ع‬ � , "to ascend," is only attested in the Qurʾan in the very specialized sense of entering heaven. (The noun ‫ج‬ � َ ‫ر‬ ‫ع‬ � َ ‫�م‬ is likewise used only in connection with heaven).16 The word in the sense of ascent was therefore likely borrowed; likely from Ethiopic, in which the ordinary meaning of ዐረገ is indeed "to go up." Consequently, to turn, to lame," and in numerous other derivations of the root (most of which can incidentally be found in Castell's Lexicon). Blau contended from this evidence that Biblical ‫ערג‬ is best understood as a verb meaning "to incline." The LXX's translations, moreover, were approximately correct all along, for "to long" is a plausible tropical extension of the verb's intransitive sense. Like Gesenius before him, Blau was perhaps motivated in the last stage 12 Castell, Lexicon heptaglotton. 13 Michaelis , Supplementa, 1968, Supplementa, -1969 Gesenius, Handwörterbuch, 892-894. 15 Blau, ‫".לבירורן"‬ 16 Blau's citation of ‫ׂש‬ ‫מֹות‬ ‫הֲ‬ ‫ּבַ‬ was an instance of a plural subject's taking a singular feminine predicate, just as nonhuman plurals do in Arabic.20 As for Ps 42:2, ibn Ezra noted that nouns which usually refer to male animals can sometimes denote females too, like ‫ת‬ ‫ּבַ‬ ‫ז‬ ‫עֵ‬ ‫ּה‬ ‫תָ‬ ‫נָ‬ ‫ׁשְ‬ at Num 15:27.21 Eight centuries later, Emil Kautzsch gave precisely the same explanation.22 All of these are serviceable ad-hoc exculpations of their respective verses, but none of them accounts on its own for both problematic instances of ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ

‫.ּת‬
Twentieth-century editors of the Masoretic text saw another way out, offering emendations rather than grammatical explanations. Frants Buhl proposed in his edition of the Psalms that ‫ֹג‬ ‫ר‬ ‫עֲ‬ ‫ּתַ‬ ‫ל‬ ‫ּיָ‬ ‫אַ‬ ‫ּכְ‬ is haplographic for ‫ֹג‬ ‫ר‬ ‫עֲ‬ ‫ּתַ‬ ‫ת‬ ‫לֶ‬ ‫ּיֶ‬ ‫אַ‬ ‫,ּכְ‬ and thus that the animal in question is a doe after all.23 All of his successors have followed him, down to Hans Bardtke in the BHS. Thomas Cheyne, by contrast, suggested that ‫תערג‬ in Ps 42:2 had been metathesized from ‫,תגער‬ "cries out." Indeed, all these grammatical explanations and textual emendations are embarrassed attempts to evacuate the scandal of a rare verb that appears in only one form. It is that form, ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫,ּת‬ which we must account for: parsimony warns against dodging the problem with piecemeal explanations.
I propose the following solution: ‫ערג‬ is to be treated in the first place as a transitive verb. And ‫רֹוג‬ ‫עֲ‬ ַ ‫ּת‬ is not a 3fs, but rather a 2ms verb whose implied subject is in all attested instances "God"; and whose direct objects are ‫ל‬ ‫ּיָ‬ ‫,אַ‬ ‫י‬ ‫ׁשִ‬ ‫פְ‬ ‫,נַ‬ and ‫מֹות‬ ‫הֲ‬ ‫.ּבַ‬ This analysis resolves all disagreements between subject and verb. It also lets the Masoretic text stand without modification.
The sense of ‫ערג‬ need not be fixed here. But if we borrow Joshua Blau's hypothesis that ‫ערג‬ means "to bend" (without endorsing his further conclusions) we can read the verses like this: Joel 1:20: Quin et bestias agri ad te torques, nam alvei aquae exsiccati sunt, et ignis consumpsit prata deserti. Thou also turnest the beasts of the field unto thee, for the rills of water are dried up, and fire hath consumed the meadows of the wilderness.
Ps 42:2: Sicut cervum ad alveos aquae, ita animam meam ad te torques, O Elohim. As thou turnest a deer unto rills of water, so turnest thou my soul unto thee, O God. This would be nothing unusual: ‫י‬ ‫ׁשִ‬ ‫פְ‬ ‫נַ‬ is very often construed with verbs of spatial manipulation.27 Alternatively, we might attribute to ‫ערג‬ the same tropical sense as ‫חול‬ and torqueo, viz. "to torture": Joel 1:20: Quin et bestias agri de te angis, nam alvei aquae exsiccati sunt, etc. Thou also puttest the beasts of the field in anguish for thee, etc.