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March 22, 2006
To Swear on Someone Else's Life
While working on RS 94.2284, one of the new Ugaritc tablets, I ran across something that I thought might be of interest to my Biblioblogging friends. In this Ugaritic letter, Abny, who seems to have a raft of problems, says to Urtēnu,
12) ħ npšk w ħ n[pšy]
In the interest of commonality of fonts, I use ħ for het (ח). The reconstruction follows Tropper, 516, but is very reasonable from what can be made out of the immediate context.
I translate the line, "(By) the life of your breath/soul and (by) the life of my breath/soul." The line is followed immediately by a declaration. In other words, Abny swears to the truth of her declaration on her own life and that of Urtēnu.
Take a look at I Samuel 1:26 for example,
וַתֹּאמֶר בִּי אֲדֹנִי, חֵי נַפְשְׁךָ אֲדֹנִי; אֲנִי הָאִשָּׁה, הַנִּצֶּבֶת עִמְּכָה בָּזֶה, לְהִתְפַּלֵּל, אֶל-יְהוָה.
Hannah swears by Eli's living soul. It is further of interest that the Ugaritic letter also deals with sacrifice of a cow (a alp in this case) but in such a different context that, at this time, I'm not sure any meaningful comparison should be attempted.
Other examples of חֵי נַפְשְׁךָ include, I Samuel 17:55, 20:3; II Samuel 11:11, 14:19; II Kings 2:2,4,6 and 4:30.
I'm not sure too much should be made of this. First, the expression most likely means little more than "as sure as you live." Second, while the parallel between the Ugaritic and Hebrew is interesting, I think very little should be claimed. On the one hand, we may be dealing with a long-lived idiom. How long lived I will leave to others but it's life must be measured in hundreds of years bridging between at least two distinct but related languages. On the other hand, this may simply be a case of useful expression occurring independently in both linguistic traditions; what Daniel Dennett might call a "good trick."
(Note: while I can not find ħ npšk in any other Ugaritic text, the letter string npšk alone occurs in KTU 1.17 II:14 and KTU 1.6 III:19-20. In the first case the k is separated by a word divider and is clearly the particle meaning "because." In the case of KTU 1.6 III:19-20, the k is also the particle rather than the pronoun and on the line following npš. So RS 94.2284:12 appears to be the only known example of this idiom in Ugaritic.)
Reference:
Posted by DuaneSmith at March 22, 2006 07:25 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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Comments
Duane,
I once examined the Ugaritic and Hebrew evidence for a commonality of nepsh for my entrance paper to the Ph.D. program. I think that you are spot on concerning the "long lived idiom." From the evidence that I adduced it seems to me that it was a common Semitic idiom. If I recall there is some reference to the same idiom in the Neo-Assyrian literature. It has been ages since I looked at this material but I will see if I can find the paper today.
Best
Joe
Posted by: Joe Cathey at March 23, 2006 06:31 AM
Joe,
You are certainly correct the npš is common Semitic and that various of its cognates, many of them having to do with wind or breath, occur in nearly all Akkadian dialects including Neo-Assyrian. However, does the express ħ npšk, or the like, occur in Akkadian literature? I couldn't find am Akkadian example; but then again I didn't look too hard. If you know of one please let me know.
Posted by: Duane at March 23, 2006 06:58 AM
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