Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

D. Pardee / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 99-108 103
McKane finds such an interpretation of vs. 5b as this “weak and tautological”
(p. 469). Were this true, it still would not carry much weight, for vs. 5a is not a
paragon of profundity. Moreover, the answer to the “tautology” of 5b may lie in
an analysis of 5a. There the proverbist avoids complete tautology (*ʿēd ʾḝmûnîm
yāʿîd ʾḝmûnîm “A truthful witness witnesses truths” or *ʿēd ʾḝmûnîm neʾḝmān “A
truthful witness is truthful”) by stating the second half of the phrase negatively:
“tell the truth” = “not lie”. Vs. 5b is probably comparable in that a well-known
word (ʿēd) is paralleled by a word which is a cliche in usage but otherwise
antiquarian and unused outside of the stock parallelism with ʿēd. The usage
of yāpîaḥ here is comparable to English “kith and kin”, the second known, the
first unknown and unused outside this particular phrase; and to Hebrew ketem
used in various identifying phrases such as ketem ʾôpîr (Isa. xiii 12), ketem pāz
(Cant. v 11), ketem ṭāḥôr (Job xxviii 19), and parallel to zāhāb “gold” (Job xxxi
24; Prov. xxv 12; Lam. iv 1), clearly an ancient word for “gold” replaced in everyday
usage by zāhāb (cf. Eblite kutim,14 and for an identical situation, Hebrew
ḥārūṣ). I must register at least partial disagreement with P.-R. Berger, UF 2
(1970), p. 15, who claims that the parallelism in Prov. xiv 5 is chiastic. The regular
parallelism of ʿēd and yāpîaḥ would dictate the over-all parallelism A:B //
A:A (see fine analysis above). Thus in a sense the verse is chiastic, but because
of the “tautological” form of statement, both elements of the second line are in
antonymous parallelism with ʿēd ʾḝmûnîm of the first line. The cliché parallelism
of ʿēd and yāpīaḥ also precludes taking the latter as a verb in this particular
instance so long as an acceptable analysis of the verse can be found which
takes into account its otherwise regular usage as a substantive.
Prov. xiv 25 maṣṣîl nĕpāšôt ʿēd ʾḝmet a b c 2 (= x + y)
wēyāpīaḥ kĕzābîm mirmâ ׳c 2 (= x + z) b
“A truthful witness preserves lives
But a lying witness (can preserve) nothing but treachery”.
This interpretation of mirmâ within the verse is Berger’s: “Menschenleben
(kann) ein wahrhaftiger Zeuge retten, doch wer Lügen aussagt, (nur) Betrug”.15
14) G. Pettinato, “Testi cuneiformi del 3. millennio in paleo-cananeo rinvenuti nella campagna
1974 a Tell Mardīkh = Ebla”, Orientalia n.s. 44 (1975), pp. 361-74 (esp. pp. 369, 371).
15) P. 16. Cf. also Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel 6 (Leipzig, 1913) p. 63 (on xii 17); Gemser,
p. 66.