Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 99-108
Vetus
Testamentum
brill.com/vt
YPḤ “Witness” in Hebrew and Ugaritic
Dennis Pardee
Chicago
At the risk of slighting other contributions, I would distinguish four principal
stages in the scientific elucidation of Hebrew yp( y)ḥ “witness”. Cutting through
the equivocations of previous commentators, in 1909 Mayer Lambert stated
that yp( y)ḥ in Proverbs (vi 19, xii 17, xiv 5, 25, xix 5, 9) and in Habakkuk (ii 3)
must for syntactic reasons be interpreted as a substantive and not as a verb.1
S. E. Loewenstamm provided in 1962 the first full-scale treatment of Hebrew
ypḥ in the light of Ugaritic ypḥ “witness”.2 In 1965 Mitchell Dahood pointed
out that the different consonants in Ugaritic ypḥ “witness” vs. mpḫm “bellows”
precludes a derivation of the former from the Ugaritic root meaning ‘to blow’
(npḫ/pḫ, attested only in the noun mpḫm).3 William McKane’s 1970 commentary
on Proverbs provided the first consistent attempt in such a commentary to
interpret Hebrew yp( y)ḥ under the impact of Ugaritic ypḥ “witness”.4
The occurrence of Ugaritic ypḥ in two recently published texts (Ugaritic
texts 1971 and 1976 cited below) not included in R. E. Whitaker’s Concordance
of the Ugaritic Literature (Cambridge, Mass., 1972) provides us with the opportunity
to review the entire question and provide a summary discussion. It will
1) “Notes exégétiques,” REJ 57 (1909), pp. 279-80.
2) “yāpē a ḥ, yāpī a ḥ, yāpî a ḥ,” Lešonenu 26 (1962), pp. 205-8.
3) “Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography III”, Biblica 46 (1965), pp. 311-32 (esp. pp. 319-20); idem, Psalms
I (Garden City, 1965), p. 169. Dahood’s most recent contribution to the problem is most puzzling
considering his several statements 1958-1965. In L. R. Fisher (ed.), Ras Shamra Parallels 2 (Rome,
1975), p. 24, he translates the relevant portion of Prov. vi 19: “The lying witness vents lies”, and
implies that pḥ/yp( y)ḥ is from the same root as Ugaritic mpḫm “bellows” (see full discussion of
these points below). Since this is the exact opposite of his position in Biblica 46 and Psalms I, I
can only surmise that he was either converted by P.-R. Berger’s article cited below (UF 2 [1970],
pp. 7-17) or that his associate in the parallels work, T. Penar, introduced a point which Dahood
missed but with which he would not agree (or have I missed a statement by Dahood rejecting his
former position?).
4) Proverbs: A New Approach (London and Philadelphia, 1970).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1978 DOI: 10.1163/15685330-12340008