Punishment vs consequences

 Fifty six times out of 382 pqd is used with the preceding word being yl. 

I have not been absolutely consistent in my translation but I wondered if 'visit against/on/upon' could be allowed to be glossed as punish in English. It cannot. Because as is obvious pqd is used with yl for a variety of contexts.

There is certainly a threat in some of them. Who would want to have the consequences of some actions held against them? If husband or wife are to leave their spouse and children without cause - then will want and misery stand over the parent when the visitation is made against the parent? (You may note that Mr Dickens never uses the word punish in A Christmas Carol - he knew.)

Genesis 39:4	vipqdhv yl bitv	ויפקדהו and he had him officiate over ביתו his house
Genesis 41:34	pqdim yl harx	פקדים officers over הארץ the land
Exodus 32:34	vpqdti ylihm k+atm	ופקדתי then I will visit upon them חטאתם their sin
Exodus 38:21	pqd yl pi	פקד is the office over פי the mandate of
Leviticus 26:16	vhpqdti ylicm bhlh	והפקדתי I will visit against you בהלה vexation
Numbers 4:27	vpqdtm ylhm bmwmrt	ופקדתם and you will officiate over them במשמרת in the keeping of
Numbers 16:29	ipqd ylihm la	יפקד is visited on them לא not
Joshua 10:18	vhpqidv ylih anwim	והפקידו and conscript over it אנשים persons
2 Samuel 3:8	vtpqd yli yvn	ותפקד and you visit with concerning me עון the iniquity of
1 Kings 14:27	vhpqid yl id	והפקיד and entrusted them to יד the hand of
2 Kings 11:18	pqdvt yl bit	פקדות officers over בית the house of
2 Kings 25:19	pqid yl anwi	פקיד an officer over אנשי --
2 Kings 25:22	vipqd ylihm at	ויפקד he entrusted to them את --
Isaiah 10:12	apqd yl pri	אפקד I will make a visit to פרי the fruit of
Isaiah 13:11	vpqdti yl tbl	ופקדתי and I will visit on תבל the world
Isaiah 15:7	vpqdtm yl nkl	ופקדתם and what they have conscripted over נחל the wadi of
Isaiah 27:3	ipqd ylih lilh	יפקד any visit against her לילה night
Jeremiah 9:24	vpqdti yl cl	ופקדתי and I will visit -- כל all
Jeremiah 11:22	pqd ylihm hbkvrim	פקד I will visit them הבחורים their youths in their prime
Jeremiah 13:21	ipqd ylic vat	יפקד he visits you ואת and
Jeremiah 15:3	vpqdti ylihm arby	ופקדתי then I will visit upon them ארבע four
Jeremiah 21:14	vpqdti ylicm cpri	ופקדתי and I will visit you כפרי according to the fruit of
Jeremiah 23:2	pqd ylicm at	פקד I will visit upon you את --
Jeremiah 23:34	vpqdti yl haiw	ופקדתי I will visit -- האיש person
Jeremiah 25:12	apqd yl mlc	אפקד I will make a visit to מלך the king of
Jeremiah 27:8	apqd yl hgvi	אפקד I will make a visit to הגוי nation
Jeremiah 29:32	pqd yl wmyih	פקד I will visit -- שמעיה Shemaiah
Jeremiah 30:20	vpqdti yl cl	ופקדתי and I will visit -- כל all
Jeremiah 36:31	vpqdti yliv vyl	ופקדתי and I will visit upon him ועל and upon
Jeremiah 40:11	hpqid ylihm at	הפקיד he had entrusted over them את --
Jeremiah 44:13	vpqdti yl hivwbim	ופקדתי and I will visit -- היושבים the settlers
Jeremiah 44:13	pqdti yl irvwlm	פקדתי I have visited at ירושלם Jerusalem
Jeremiah 51:27	pqdv ylih +psr	פקדו conscript against her טפסר a marshal
Jeremiah 51:44	vpqdti yl bl	ופקדתי and I will visit -- בל Bel
Jeremiah 51:47	vpqdti yl psili	ופקדתי and I will visit against פסילי the graven images of
Jeremiah 51:52	vpqdti yl psilih	ופקדתי and I will visit -- פסיליה her graven images
Jeremiah 52:25	pqid yl anwi	פקיד an officer over אנשי --
Hosea 2:15	vpqdti ylih at	ופקדתי then I will visit on her את --
Hosea 4:9	vpqdti yliv drciv	ופקדתי then I will visit on him דרכיו his ways
Hosea 4:14	apqvd yl bnvticm	אפקוד I will visit -- בנותיכם your daughters
Hosea 12:3	vlpqd yl iyqb	ולפקד and will visit on יעקב Jacob
Amos 3:2	apqd ylicm at	אפקד I will visit upon you את --
Amos 3:14	vpqdti yl mzbkvt	ופקדתי I will visit -- מזבחות the altars of
Zephaniah 1:8	vpqdti yl hwrim	ופקדתי that I will visit -- השרים the nobility
Zephaniah 1:9	vpqdti yl cl	ופקדתי and I will visit -- כל all
Zephaniah 1:12	vpqdti yl hanwim	ופקדתי and I will visit -- האנשים the men
Zephaniah 3:7	pqdti ylih acn	פקדתי I visited on her אכן nevertheless
Psalms 109:6	hpqd yliv rwy	הפקד make officiate over him רשע a criminal
Job 34:13	pqd yliv arxh	פקד has given visitation rights to him ארצה earthward
Job 36:23	pqd yliv drcv	פקד has visited on him דרכו his way
Ezra 1:2	pqd yli lbnvt	פקד has entrusted me לבנות to build
Nehemiah 11:9	pqid ylihm vihvdh	פקיד an officer over them ויהודה and Judah
Nehemiah 11:14	vpqid ylihm zbdial	ופקיד and officer over them זבדיאל Zabdiel
2 Chronicles 12:10	vhpqid yl id	והפקיד and entrusted them to יד the hand of
2 Chronicles 34:17	hmpqdim vyl id	המפקדים the officials and into יד the hand of
2 Chronicles 36:23	pqd yli lbnvt	פקד has entrusted me לבנות to build

Finding the root of a Hebrew word

 I put up a preliminary page on how to find the root of a Hebrew word.

One in about 10 of you if that are clicking and looking. If you are learning Hebrew or even if you know it, this exercise in language study is interesting. Click the link.

God and theatre

So my last post was very short. Here is a view of more detail. The lyrics for the Bernstein Mass are here Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  It bears some study. They reveal all the contradictions in our thoughts - quite a remarkable achievement in my opinion.

Too much to do recently - so no time for posting. 

In the beginning was ...
and the word was Torah

Torah is from irh, throwing the grappling hook against the wall of time and seeing what it pulls back into our consciousness and what we can bootstrap ourselves into when it catches a useful hold.

Note the use of the verb to throw or shoot.

Notice how close the root irh is to ira (fear).

Bart Ehrman goes on and on about punishment in the OT. He is so well educated. How can he write with such a tiresome motif? Deuteronomy 28 is directly contradicted by the book of Job - or at least attenuated with respect to its intent - so the contracts described in Deuteronomy do not reflect the character of the OT God. Rather that character Job successfully appeals against a trivialized view of God. And as for 'the ban of utter destruction' - obviously there is present day perspective on such tribalism, but it too does not reflect God's character. (Except in the radical death required from us all, and symbolized in the rite of circumcision, an antitype of the cross.)

Also - to repeat, there is no distinct word for punish in the Hebrew canon. English translators have made up out of their own culture the idea that God can be blamed for the human desire for domination and power.

Mind you - God does not need my defense, nor is Ehrman wrong in describing what people think about the OT. What you think is what you get. That's hardly an argument in favour of our thinking or our actions.

God? Obvious.

 God is obvious. I watched Bernstein's Mass last night. PBS Great Performances - 2019 encore c 2020. 

Truth and Trust

What an astonishing array of links to articles on this subject I just received! The list of links is at the bottom of this post.

It was not just the Trump era that questioned our sense of what is true. We have all known the facts of propaganda throughout our lives. Even Hitler said he was doing the Lord's work - the quote is in East-West Street which I posted on here.

These 25 articles are on Torah and its trustworthiness. How I remember Mrs. Smith going on about the truth of Scripture. I don't know what she was talking about. Someone spoke through her to me, however, and I have searched my way a little to the point that I have some idea about what I am talking about. I have of course, contrary to many, actually read and studied the Scriptures enough to know just how human a creation they are. But they are something else as well. And to give Mrs. Smith credit, Exodus 34:6 was a favorite verse. And it's a goodie. Many of my favorite psalms are based on this verse.  This is the verse that Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman refers to in his article in the list.

The links to the articles are all conveniently here - https://www.thetorah.com/symposium/torat-emet.

It will take me a while to get through them all. 

Truth and trust apply everywhere of course, not just to big philosophical things, but to everyday things like driving on the right (or left if in the UK) side and stopping at stop signs and red lights (not red light districts - I suspect that image dates me).

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It's probably way beyond me to respond from my own vantage points to all these articles, each of which contain thoughts that are not foreign to me but that require further teasing out.

Personal translation

 Not only does one interpret when translating - even if I rail against it, I myself have made translations decisions based on my own personal experience of the text. What!

Yes - and for this multi-faceted root, gml, I have used up probably more English lemmas than I should have. 

So I consider maturity a reward - a benefit, even an excessive reward from the Most High. To be desired. You can see my variations in gloss in the usual place.

Translating and interpreting

It is impossible not to interpret as one translates. So for the latest scandal in the word punishment as described by Bart Ehrman in his last two posts on Amos see here and immediately prior post. I don't disagree that there are consequences for ignoring the instruction of the God portrayed in the Old Testament. I was struck though by the effrontery of the translation used:

For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron.  So I will send a fire on the house of Hazael… I will break the gate bars of Damascus and cut off the inhabitants from the Valley of Aven. (1:3-5)

The offending words for me are "I will not revoke the punishment". The word for punishment is not in the text at all. It has been read into the verb by context. It has been read in because of the gloss chosen in English for the word wvb - which is the word for turn. See here for all its uses in the Bible. As you can see, it is the word 'return'. Return has nothing to do with punishment. The word is awibnu  (roughly ashivenu)- future, imperfect, first person singular subject and third person singular object. Literally choose between, I will return it, I will return him, I will turn him, or perhaps restore instead of return (I use that choice in some contexts). Others I allow with my concordance rules include: turn back, pay tribute, repair, give riposte, reverse / revert, occasionally 'reply'. I don't use revoke since that has to do with calling rather than turning / returning.

And you could use 'it' as the third person object - so : I will reverse it. This would work. Of course in this case it is 'la awibnu' - (add the vowels and it becomes approximately 'lo ashivenu') so it is a negative. What you choose for your gloss depends on what you think the third person pronoun suffix is referring to. What is its antecedent? In every one of these 8 instances, the immediately preceding noun is the nation addressed. I am tempted to write as I initially did, "I will not turn them" and allow the obvious antecedent the plurality of the people of the nation, to be the object. But I think I had better not. Let 'it' suffice to refer to the antecedent nation that is addressed.

The RSV, NRSV, ESV and another 7 English translations have decided to make this passage 'clearer' and have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. Neither hat nor rabbit is in the text. The policy of the churches who approved these words must be to keep the people ignorant of God and of the character of God.

Punishment has been introduced into the text. This word requires an invisible and unstated antecedent. If God determined to turn any of these nations, they would have turned as Nineveh did in the book of Jonah. But God doesn't work that way, he allows the consequences of our actions to come to us so that we might learn the difference between good and evil - just like we wanted. This applies to all the nations even Judah and Israel.

You can see this very same word and phrase in Numbers 23:20 in the mouth of Balaam. No punishment there. Here the antecedent is explicitly blessing. Even if in the discourse analysis of the implications of the continual acts of violence against others, the implied antecedent is the opposite of blessing, you can't use punishment for this, because the implication is that God is punishing. The consequence may be punishing but the agency is not God. For the atheist it is the consequence of a hard reality, for the believer, it should be the same, otherwise their God is even more cruel than the atheist's. Perhaps this is why the world frequently knows better than the church. They have learned the church's lessons better.

God has not turned the hearts of these translators either. And so we the people are misled again. I am consistently against the translator telling us what the text means. A translator should report what the text says as accurately as he or she can.