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April 17, 2009
When A Smile May Not Be Just A Smile As Time Goes By
John Hobbins wants to see more smiles when people read their Bible. I couldn't agree more. In fact, I think educated people should laugh hysterically at some passages and morally sensitive people should recoil in horror at others. But I digress.
John thinks that translators would do well to translate several words and idioms into the English word "smile." One of his examples is Numbers 6:26 from the Priestly Benediction. John approves the translation,
May the Lord smile on you // and be gracious to you.
for the Hebrew יָאֵר יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ.
And I don't totally disagree but I don't totally agree either. Correctly I think, John asks us to compare Psalms 4:6; 67:1 (האיר פנים); Proverbs 16:15 (אור פנים). "Literally, the idioms are as follows: 'make one’s face shine on another,' and 'the shine of someone’s face.'"
I would also suggest that we should also compare the blessing in a letter from the King of Ugarit to the queen mother, his mother (KTU 2:13:17b-18).
w . pn / mlk . nr . bn
wa panū malki nārū binū
"And may the face of the king shine on (all of) us."
I said in a comment to John's post, "I think the king of Ugarit is referring to the Hittite king in this case." But on reflection, he might have meant a god, mlk ʿṯtrt, for example or, even more likely, his own now deceased father, the previous king of Ugarit. I think the King of Ugarit would have used different language if he intended this to mean that his own face would shine (smile) on his mother. It is hard for me to believe that the King of Ugarit is hoping for only a friendly smile, although that was no doubt part of it. In any case, some care is called for. I am not claiming that the Hebrew idiom came from the Ugaritic idiom. Better, I think that they both came from a shared pool of idioms that have many of the same general characteristics as do culture words. We have here a very long lasting, if perhaps underrepresented, Semitic idiom.
The closest Akkadian example I could find, and I didn't try all that hard, is the expression panīšina unawīrma, "I have made their (the slave girls') faces shine." In context, this last expression may mean something like "fatten them up." See CAD N1, 216. "Make them healthy looking" for resale is also very close to the meaning. However one understands the phrase, I don't actually think the slave owner's intention was to simply make them smile, though that may have been part of it. Like the example from Ugarit, one shouldn't make too much out of this one example from Akkadian. Akkadian is even more distant from Hebrew than is Ugaritic and like individual words, (seeming) cognate idioms often have significantly different semantic ranges in different languages.
However, even with all the caveats, I wonder if the Hebrew expression actually means "smile" except as part of a wider concept: to look favorably upon. A smile may have been part of the idiom's meaning but I think it only part of it. I worry that translating the idiom as "smile" may inappropriately narrows its semantic range. How one should translate the idiom is a different problem.
For those with truly abnormal interests, I engaged in some wild, possibly irresponsible, speculation about the priestly benediction back in December of 2007.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 17, 2009 1:40 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Nice post, Duane. Thanks.
Posted by: Alan Lenzi at April 18, 2009 6:46 PM
Yes, nice post Duane. You are right; "smile" is too narrow. Speaking as a lit person, it's an idiom. The connotation is "may the sun shine on you," i.e., bless you, make you happy, make everything go well with you, etc. Comparing a king/leader/elder/the one in control, to the sun and his/her notice the equivalent of the sun shining on X is not exactly a new idea. Nor is it confined to Semitic poetry/song/etc.
Remember that folk song, "You are my Sunshine"? Same concept explicitly stated in modern dress.
Posted by: rochelle at April 19, 2009 1:53 AM
Hi Duane,
I only noticed now, thanks to James McGrath's carnival, that you posted on this. Great stuff.
I agree with you and Rochelle Altmann, by the way, as is clear, I think, in my post: "smile" is too narrow; the idioms I note in Hebrew and you note elsewhere are broader and with a different focus, even if they would have covered "smiling" of a positive kind.
Posted by: John Hobbins at April 30, 2009 9:41 PM
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