Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

J. A. Emerton / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 109-112 111
good and bad alike, apart from the rarest of exceptions like Enoch and Elijah.
If beliyyaʿal were a synonym for Sheol, a ben-beliyyaʿal would be most naturally
understood to mean someone who was condemned to death or doomed to die
soon or, perhaps, worthy of death. That is how ben-māwet is normally understood.
McCarter, indeed, objects to the translation of ben-māwet as “one who is
as good as dead” or “one who deserves to die”. His reason is that “No good parallel
for such a meaning exists among the numerous uses of the noun bēn, ‘son’ ”
(p. 299). But he fails to explain how he understands benê temûtâ in Ps. lxxix 11,
cii 21, where his kind of translation seems scarcely appropriate: the context is
speaking of misfortune, not of wickedness, and the parallel line refers to the
prisoner (ʾāsîr), who is a person in distress.
The objection raised above to McCarter’s translation does not apply in the
same way to Thomas’s explanation of the Hebrew, apart from his inappropriate
English analogy of “an infernal fellow”. It is not, according to his theory,
that a man’s actions or words are “hellish” in character, but that they are of a
kind that will bring him to Sheol—presumably prematurely. Nevertheless, the
contexts in which the phrases are used sometimes suggest a stress on the evil
character of people rather than on their coming fate (e.g. Deut. xv 9; Judg. xix
22; 1 Sam. i 16, x 27, xxx 22; 1 Kings xxi 10, 13; Nah. i 11, ii 1; Prov. vi 12, xvi 27, xix
28; Job xxxiv 18). Thomas’s theory would be possible if there had been a shift of
emphasis from the coming consequence of an evil deed or word to an emphasis
on the wickedness of the person concerned, but he provides no evidence of
it. A theory that postulated a meaning directly, rather than indirectly, involving
wickedness of character would be preferable. Such an explanation would
be provided by a theory which, like that of Driver, saw in blyʿl an abstract noun
denoting some kind of evil. The piʿel of the verb blʿ is certainly used in some
passages to denote actions other than swallowing, such as:
Isa. iii 12: wederek ʾōreḥōtekā billēʿû (cp. matʿîm in the parallel)
Isa. xix 3: waʿăṣātô ʾăballēaʿ
Job ii 3: wattesîtēnî bô leballeʿô ḥinnām
Lam. ii 2: billaʿ ʾădōnāy (we)lōʾ ḥāmal ʾēt kol-neʾôt yaʿăqōb
Lam. ii 8: . . . lōʾ hēšîb yādô mibballēaʿ
It is also possible to compare the use of the qal in Hosea viii 7 and Ps. cxxiv 3
(cp. the niphʿal in Isa. xxviii 7 and Hosea viii 8). It is unnecessary to decide
whether the verb in such contexts is from a different root from bālaʿ “to swallow”
(as Driver supposes), or whether its meaning is a figurative extension of
that meaning (as is supposed by B.D.B.). It is enough that the verb is not used