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January 14, 2008
On Wells and Walls
Although it's over two months away, I'm putting the finishing touches on my paper for WECSOR. One of those finishing touches involves working through a short paper by Samuel Iwry. Iwry suggests that the Hebrew expression מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר, "pisser against a wall" should be read מַשְׁתִּין בְּקוֹר (or מַשְׁתִּין בְּקוּר), "pisser in a spring." At least that is what I think he claims. His paper is in Modern Hebrew, not my longest suit. As far as I understand his paper, Iwry bases his argument on an analysis of the Northwest Semitic usage of expressions for wells, springs, fountains and the contamination of same. He takes בְּקִיר to be in error and emends the text to read בְּקור. He believes the error happen before the second century BCE. And if such an error did creep into the text, I agree that it must have happened that early. Students of Hebrew know of the occasional confusion between י and ו. For example, in Jerimiah.8:7, the Kativ reads סוס, "horse" but the Qere reads, correctly I think, סִיס, "swallow (? or some kind of bird)." Iwry's understanding makes the expression a more damning pejorative than simply understanding the expression as a trope for a dog, taken pejoratively as a man, or as a man or boy who pollutes by simply urinating against a wall.
But is Iwry's understanding correct? First, there is no indication in any manuscript or early version or in the Qere of any passage that בְּקִיר should be read בְּקוֹר. Second, the cognate Hebrew word for "spring," "fountain" and the like is מָקוֹר (m formative) not קוֹר in all other contexts. To be sure, qr (qūru?) in Ugaritic means "spring" or "well." But Ugaritic is not Hebrew and even if it where the words are not formed the same way. Iwry, 322, 324, is aware of these issues but doesn't seem to give them much weight. Iwry's suggestion is certainly possible. But is it, as Caquot and de Robert, 310, n 19 say, "très probable?" I doubt it. I tend to want to preserve the Hebrew text unless there is some strong reason not too. I also like to pay attention to the way words in Ugaritic and Hebrew are formed and not introduce new forms into either language based on the other. While I find Iwry's suggestion abnormally interesting, I think my own suggestion is more probable.
References
Caquot, André and Philippe de Robert, Les livres de Samuel, Genève: Labor et Fides, 1994
Iwry, Samuel, קללת זיהום המים בישראל ובמזרח הקדום ("The Curse of Water Pollution in Israel and in the Ancient East"), Beth Mikra, 28, 1982-3, 322-325
Posted by Duane Smith at January 14, 2008 8:02 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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