Dust: Another verse explained (from 1 Kings 11)

Sunday 25 September 2022

Another verse explained (from 1 Kings 11)

At this rate it will only take 21,000 days or so to complete the Hebrew Canon.

In the Ely Cathedral Eucharist today, the bishop mentioned Lancelot Andrewes twice in connection with translating the Hebrew from Genesis to 2 Kings. I am assuming my reader knows no Hebrew but knows the Bible, so I don't need to elaborate on things unrelated to the language.

Here is one verse from 1 Kings 11. The preacher said that Lancelot himself translated this famous passage.

וַיֹּ֗אמֶר צֵ֣א וְעָמַדְתָּ֣ בָהָר֮ לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָה֒ וְהִנֵּ֧ה יְהוָ֣ה עֹבֵ֗ר וְר֣וּחַ גְּדוֹלָ֡ה וְחָזָ֞ק מְפָרֵק֩ הָרִ֨ים וּמְשַׁבֵּ֤ר סְלָעִים֙ לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֔ה לֹ֥א בָר֖וּחַ יְהוָ֑ה
וְאַחַ֤ר הָר֨וּחַ רַ֔עַשׁ לֹ֥א בָרַ֖עַשׁ יְהוָֽה

It's a bit longer than the first verse of Genesis that we looked at yesterday.

'Ah,' you say. 'Still incomprehensible.'

I get that - so let's look at it in SimHebrew so at least you will know which side is up.

viamr xa vymdt bhr lpni ihvh vhnh ihvh yobr vruk gdolh vkzq mprq hrim umwbr slyim lpni ihvh la bruk ihvh [lf]
vakr hruk ryw la bryw ihvh

I have put the music below also - but note the line feed almost all the way through the text. I marked it with [lf]. The accent on the prior word represents the cadence on the subdominant - a mid-verse rest on the fourth note of the scale. The fourth note is A. The accent looks like ^ but it is smaller and under the syllable. It occurs at most once per verse.

(It's called atnak, or atnkta if spelled in SimHebrew. You will find it spelled in various ways in English: atnaḥ and etnaḥta, are the most common. I tend to the shorter names. I don't use the h with the dot below it, since it is a pain to type and is largely irrelevant to the pronunciation. In SimHebrew this rougher /h/ aspirate is a /k/, a letter traditionally used for kaf - but c is the mirror image of כ kaf - which really should be spelled caf. The k as an opportunistic option for chet -- which can now be spelled ket and is pronounced ḥet.)

Every verse that contains a cadence on the subdominant moves from the start of the verse to that rest point, and then moves from the rest point to the end of the verse. Notice that it is not half-way through. The atnak is not division by 2, but rather separation into 2 sections. Its placement is often surprising -- so pay attention to the release of tension. It's a miniature sabbath in the text of 93% of the verses in the Hebrew Bible.

So let's look at this phrase by phrase. Wow - that's harder without the accents as a guide to the phrasing! So we cheat for a minute and use the English and its punctuation as a guide to the phrasing:

And he said, Go forth and stand on the hill in the presence of Yahweh. And behold Yahweh passed by, and a great and resolute wind rent hills and broke cliffs in the presence of Yahweh. Not in the wind, Yahweh.

And after the wind, a quake. Not in the quake, Yahweh.

viamr, xa vymdt bhr lpni ihvh. vhnh ihvh yobr, vruk gdolh vkzq mprq hrim umwbr slyim lpni ihvh. la bruk ihvh.
vakr hruk, ryw. la bryw ihvh.

Word by word: sound them out as best you can:

viamr, [And he said] xa vymdt [Go forth and stand] bhr [on the hill] lpni ihvh [in the presence of Yahweh]. vhnh ihvh yobr [And behold Yahweh passed by], vruk [and a wind] gdolh [great] vkzq [and resolute] mprq hrim [rent hills] umwbr slyim [and broke cliffs] lpni ihvh. la bruk [not in the wind] ihvh.

vakr hruk [And after the wind], ryw [a quake]. la bryw ihvh.

You should now recognize ihvh and lpni ihvh, and perhaps ruk and la and ryw. Let's look at these one at a time:

ihvh is the 4-letter name, God's personal name, usually rendered the Lord in small caps. The transcription substitutes adonai but you can still tell that it is a substitution since adonai requires three notes but there are only two in the music.
lpni - the root is pnh. In this form the prefix l is a preposition, the h is dropped for the plural im and the m is dropped for this 'construct' form. The construct form is common in Hebrew. It is a concatenation form for nouns, in this case 'the faces of' often rendered as 'the presence of'. You can check out all the glosses I use for this word here. This word also functions as a preposition, before or facing.
ruk looks like a single syllable but it is two ru and ach. It is spirit or wind.
la is a negative, one of several. The /a/ carries an o sound. So it can be confused with lo = to him, since la - no/not sounds the same. One needs to tell from the aural context. (Good example in Psalms 100 - see vs 3).
ryw is quake - also two syllables. /y/ is ayin, a guttural also, a bit deeper than aleph (/a/). Like /a/, /y/ can carry any vowel. Below it carries an a in bar 2, an o in bar 4, an i in bar 5 and an a in ryw in bars 10 and 12.
The syllables and pronunciation are clearer in the music.

Notice that every word has at least one accent. [A word is a sequence of consonants and optionally a maqaf -- that is a hyphen-equivalent.] Sometimes the accent is just a repetition of the reciting note that we are on. That shows that the accents show both music and (as one would expect) accentuation or stress. They do not show punctuation. If you study these, you will note some common accents and learn something of their continuity or pausal impact in the musical line.

1 Kings 19 verse 11

You can clearly see that this is more complex music than the start of Genesis. Here there are several ornaments representing the accents above the text. Notice how much of the tune is recitation on the dominant (the fifth above e).

The accented syllables (rather than just the letters as in the earlier post) are in red.

וְאַחַ֤ר הָר֨וּחַ רַ֔עַשׁ לֹ֥א בָרַ֖עַשׁ יְהוָֽה

These red syllables should correspond to the changes of notes in the music and lyrics. Note the differing types of syllable, open (consonant [+ vowel] alone), closed (consonant [+ vowel] + consonant), and notice the reversal of the vowel and consonant when there is a final guttural - as in ruk = ru-ach in the lyrics. (Final y, ayin also will support this reversal, called a furtive patah. There are names for everything, but I haven't included them because it distracts from hearing the Hebrew itself.)

Must we include the next verse also? This post is getting long - but here it is:

וְאַחַ֤ר הָרַ֙עַשׁ֙ אֵ֔שׁ לֹ֥א בָאֵ֖שׁ יְהוָ֑ה
וְאַחַ֣ר הָאֵ֔שׁ ק֖וֹל דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה

vakr hryw aw la baw ihvh
vakr haw qol dmmh dqh

We already know a bunch of these words from the last bit of the previous verse: vakr hruk ryw la bryw ihvh.

And after the quake, a fire. Not in the fire, Yahweh.
And after the fire, a voice muted, finely ground.

Ah Lancelot, I didn't copy your still small voice.

You can read the whole Bible in SimHebrew. For a non-Hebrew reader, I recommend it. Of course I do since I am a co-author. You can order it here for example - and put it on your phone - and you will be able to look at any verse with my close translation (for the music) at any time. The music is all transcribed and available freely on the web in several places as described on the music page in the menu.

I will guarantee that you will not find that SimHebrew takes away the fun, nor does it stop you from learning the square text from right to left. You can convert anything freely on the web here.

ואחר הרעש אש לא באש יהוה
ואחר האש קוֹל דממה דקה

If I told you that aw was fire, I suspect you could have translated most of that verse. Notice the definite article (h - prefix). The last three words, qol dmmh dqh - are voice - muted... the final root is dqq - my glosses for it are here.