Biblical Hebrew: וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם כְּמוֹ־עֵ֑גֶל לְבָנ֥וֹן וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ן כְּמ֣וֹ בֶן־רְאֵמִֽים

Ali Smith

Ali Smith

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Urdu - Pakistan
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וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם כְּמוֹ־עֵ֑גֶל לְבָנ֥וֹן וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ן כְּמ֣וֹ בֶן־רְאֵמִֽים׃
(תהלים כט ו)

And he made them to skip like Lebanon's young bull and Sirion like wild oxen's son.

What is "them" referring to here?

Here's the rest of the context:

קוֹל־יְהֹוָ֥ה בַּכֹּ֑חַ ק֥וֹל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה בֶּהָדָֽר׃
ק֣וֹל יְ֭הֹוָה שֹׁבֵ֣ר אֲרָזִ֑ים וַיְשַׁבֵּ֥ר יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה אֶת־אַרְזֵ֥י הַלְּבָנֽוֹן׃
וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם כְּמוֹ־עֵ֑גֶל לְבָנ֥וֹן וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ן כְּמ֣וֹ בֶן־רְאֵמִֽים׃
קוֹל־יְהֹוָ֥ה חֹצֵ֗ב לַהֲב֥וֹת אֵֽשׁ׃
ק֣וֹל יְ֭הֹוָה יָחִ֣יל מִדְבָּ֑ר יָחִ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה מִדְבַּ֥ר קָדֵֽשׁ׃
(תהלים כט ד-ח)

אני מודה לכם מאוד
 
    • It refers to לבנון and שריון.
    In more modern Hebrew, it would be written as
    וירקד את לבנון ואת שריון כמו עגל וכמו בן-ראמים.
     
    Also, just to point out, the etnachta mark is on the word עגל and it always divides the verse in half:

    - וירקידם כמו כגל
    - לבנון ושריון כמו בן ראמים

    And in fact in properly written Biblical text, the Book of Psalms actually has spaces and line breaks that better show the poetic structure. See for example Mechon-Mamre or the Leningrad Codex itself. For some reason, non Jewish editions of the text tend not to include these things, and it's a shame.

    So anyway, most of the Psalm exhibits parallelism between the halves of the verses. Each element in the second half is parallel or complementary to an element of the first half.

    - וירקידם -- לבנון ושריון (the latter complements the former by filling in the pronoun reference)
    - כמו עגל -- כמו בן ראמים (these two comparisons are equivalent, they both serve the same semantic purpose)
     
    From my abundant experience with Hebrew morphology, combined with the fact that it makes zero sense semantically.

    Where did you come across that it can be added to a finite verb? And what do you think its meaning is in such a case?
     
    The mem has been taken as so-called "enclitic mem", not as a 3ms pronominal suffix. It is a syllable added to the end of a word that people are now calling a "topicalizer". That is, so-called "enclitic mem" is used to put some special form of emphasis on a word to stress the difference between that word and what precedes. So, it is more strongly marking the notion of dancing as a new topic as opposed to the notion of breaking in the previous verses. And, if the concept of enclitic mem is new and problematic for you, I can recommend an article on the topic.
     
    Ali, I would very much like to see what evidence you have that the mem in this verse is not a pronominal suffix.

    As I see it, the words do not make sense without it. This is a transitive verb that needs an object. Why shouldn't the suffix that looks like an object be interpreted as the object that we expect to find?

    It very well could be that the so-called (and poorly named) "enclitic mem" exists somewhere. But this doesn't seem to be it.
     
    Enclitic -m is not a common phenomenon in biblical Hebrew and I confess that I do not evoke its presence very often. Examples are attested in Ugaritic (see Tropper's grammar, p. 829). Here's Layton's dissertation where there is a chapter on the particle, and you will find in his bibliography a reference to an older dissertation by David Robertson with a wider purview than PNN.
     
    Last edited:
    So what makes you say that this is an example of it, when the enclitic pronoun makes more sense semantically?
     
    וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם כְּמוֹ־עֵ֑גֶל לְבָנ֥וֹן וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ן כְּמ֣וֹ בֶן־רְאֵמִֽים׃
    (תהלים כט ו)

    And he made Lebanon to skip like a young bull and Sirion like wild oxen's son.
    And he made them to skip like Lebanon's young bull and Sirion like wild oxen's son.

    Doesn't the first interpretation make more sense? If we took the mem as a 3mp pronoun, what would it refer to?
     
    Drink said:
    Also, just to point out, the etnachta mark is on the word עגל and it always divides the verse in half:

    - וירקידם כמו כגל
    - לבנון ושריון כמו בן ראמים

    And in fact in properly written Biblical text, the Book of Psalms actually has spaces and line breaks that better show the poetic structure. See for example Mechon-Mamre or the Leningrad Codex itself. For some reason, non Jewish editions of the text tend not to include these things, and it's a shame.

    So anyway, most of the Psalm exhibits parallelism between the halves of the verses. Each element in the second half is parallel or complementary to an element of the first half.

    - וירקידם -- לבנון ושריון (the latter complements the former by filling in the pronoun reference)
    - כמו עגל -- כמו בן ראמים (these two comparisons are equivalent, they both serve the same semantic purpose)
    Click to expand...
    The Masoretes pointed the sufformative on וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם as the 3mp object suffix, and their accentuation shows that they were thinking of the cedars as the object of the verb. So, the Masoretic accentuation with אֶתְנַחְתָּא‎ under עֵ֑גֶל indicates the translation "He causes them (i.e. the cedars) to dance like a calf, Lebanon and Siryon like a young bovid", which isn't all that bad structurally. The problem is that it does not reflect standard parallelistic structure in Hebrew poetry, with one object and pronominal form referring back to the previous object (וַיַּרְקִידֵ֥ם) and then Lebanon and Siryon as the new object of the second colon, the first line segment then being much shorter than the second if you end it with עֵ֑גֶל. As a bicolon, it works reasonably well in terms of simply words on the page but not that well as a verse. You can see already that the editor of BHS (see attachment) put a space between לְבָנ֥וֹן and וְ֝שִׂרְיֹ֗ן telling us to ignore the Masoretic accentuation. So, this is a fairly old redivision of the text that I simply happen to have adopted.
     

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    Ok, I see what you mean. I did not think to separate לבנון from שריון. I see that what you propose is a plausible interpretation. However, I still see my aforementioned interpretation as plausible, and fitting well with biblical poetic parallelism. I don't think we can rule either one out.
     
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