unknown4

I have been thinking about this passage again, and from my understanding prepositions weren't always spelled out, but kind of assumed. Like in verse 13 for example, it says "They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion." From my understanding, "with" is not in the text.

I see a similiarity between verses 12-13 and verses 16

12-13 Many bulls have compassed me:
strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
They gaped upon me with their mouths,
as a ravening and a roaring lion.

16 For dogs have compassed me:
the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me:
like a lion my hands and my feet/they dug my hands and feet.

Verse 19 says:

Deliver my soul from the sword;
my darling from the power [literally: hand] of the dog.

Does anyone here think it's possible that, if the text really was "karu" and not "ka'ari", that perhaps verse 16 is saying "they dug [at] my hands and feet"? Since there is a mention of dogs, maybe it's saying they were digging the ground at his hands and feet? If the "dogs" were "compassing" him, maybe it was in reference to people going around him and digging up the ground.

A dog can do a digging motion as an intimidating gesture..

Verses 14-15 seem to refer to someone who is sprawled out, weak and on the ground:

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

So digging up ground near his hands and feet seems like a possibility.

Perhaps a strained interpretation, but just trying to figure out what was really meant here.

spin

You're conjuring up "The Bone Collector" for me. Where are the hands and feet, if not buried (for the dogs to dig at them)?

Ancient Hebrew is actually more mysterious than we would care to believe. We don't have any speakers of the language. We've only got modern reinterpreters. We get all knowledgeable that seeing as there is no preposition we have to dismiss the word that has the best attestation in the context. We simply don't know what an ancient reader would have understood by the verse. Was a preposition required in the context for a specific meaning? You'll find some commentators on the verse don't think a preposition is necessary, that K)RY would have been sufficient in the context to convey the desired meaning. I don't know. Digging doesn't in any way work for me. Neither does the wild extrapolation of piercing. Evildoers surround him, like a lion -- and then I have to insert a preposition -- (at) my hands and feet. That is required in English. But just think of the verb "look (at)", for in other languages a preposition is not necessary, eg Italian, which has "guardare" and no need for a preposition.

Our biggest problem in dealing with the verse is our ignorance. We don't know enough about the language and there isn't enough of a sample of the language contained in the Hebrew bible to make serious statistical analyses to get a better understanding. Linguistic samples these days tend to have many more words and sentences than are found in the bible.

We do know that Hebrew tends to use images a lot and almost as often images in parallel, so one could easily have dogs in one instant attacking while in another instant, a lion, to convey the required effect, yet we know we are dealing with imagery which reflects the hardship of the victim.

Do you think, given our knowledge of Hebrew, there are sufficient grounds to reject K)RY?


spin