An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

servant (who is) righteous.’ 127 The ambiguity of the Hebrew can be exhibited in
English, but the grammatical question pertains to the Hebrew first of all. It is possible
to consider the phrase in light of the rest of the passage, but often in such cases no
simple resolution is possible. Nor is it always desirable: grammatical ambiguity is a
genuine and often functional part of language. The other major type of ambiguity,
lexical ambiguity, arises from various meanings of a single term; many very common
nouns and verbs have various meanings. In 2 Sam 6:2, we read ם ָעה־ל ָ ָכו ְ דוִ דּ ָ ךְ ֶל ֵיּ֫ וַ
וֹתּא ִ ר ֶשׁ א. ֲ Does ם ַע here refer to ‘people’ or ‘army’? This ambiguity is[Page 224]
resolved by the preceding verse, which mentions David’s gathering רוּח ָבּ־ל ָכּ
לאֵ רָ ְשִׂי בּ ְ ‘all the picked troops or vigorous young men in Israel’; despite uncertainty
about the exact reference of רוּח ָבּ we are dealing with a military expedition and םע
means ‘force, army.’ In vv 3 and 5 the term תיבּ, ֵ is used; that term is in each case
disambiguated by the context: the first תיבּ ֵ is ה ָע ְב ִגּ ַבּ ‘on the hill’ and so must be a
physical structure, while the second is said to be םי ִק חֲ ַשׂ מ ְ ‘rejoicing’ and so must be
a group of people.
c With these two types of ambiguity in mind, let us consider prepositions. It is plain
that lexical ambiguity cannot be associated with relational terms: the prepositions,
unlike nouns and verbs, do not have the sort of independent senses that lead to lexical
ambiguity. 128 To impute to בּ a meaning ‘in’ and a meaning ‘from’ is to separate the
word too drastically from its patterns of use. 129 Ambiguity can be associated with
prepositions, but it is structural or grammatical—it is a property of a phrase or a
clause rather than the preposition itself.
d One useful approach to the structural ambiguities associated with prepositions
involves considering the perspective from which an action is viewed (11.1). Another
approach involves ellipsis, the omission of part of a grammatical structure when that
part can be recovered from the context. When a preposition appears to be under the
immediate government of a verb, but the normal distinctive meanings of the terms
127 A similar example is ˒ăḥōtî kallâ (Cant 4:9, 10, 12; 5:1), ‘my sister, (my) bride’ or
‘my sister-bride.’
128 The tendency to impute (lexical) ambiguity to the prepositions has some roots in
the Jewish exegetical tradition; see Pardee, UF 7: 331, 333–34; 8: 321. William
Chomsky tried to defend the principle of interchangeability by an appeal to the
medieval grammarians as well as to Ugaritic; “The Ambiguity of the Prefixed
Prepositions ם, ל, ב in the Bible,” Jewish Quarterly Review 61 (1970–71) 87–89. C.
F. Whitley, basing himself on Chomsky’s article, argued for the interchangeability of
emphatic lamed with a hypothetical emphatic beth; “Some Functions of the Hebrew
Particles Beth and Lamedh,” Jewish Quarterly Review 62 (1971–72) 199–206.
129 The preference of earlier scholars for wholesale and regular emendation in order to
regularize the prepositions is equally insupportable.