A friend asked me about the language contained in Exodus 3:5 and Joshua 5:15. One verse says "take off your sandals" but the other passage speaks of one sandal rather than two. Why the difference?
My answer:
Interesting question about the sandals. A book written by Hebrew scholar Bruce Waltke (Hebrew Syntax) addresses the issue. In section 7.2.1 of Waltke's "Syntax," here's what we read:
"With countables the singular serves to enumerate one object. With entities that Hebrew counts as 'one object' or 'more than one object,' the singular usually enumerates the referent as an individual. Countable nouns are the most common."
"With collectives the singular designates a group. Some words in Hebrew, like 'fish,’ ‘sheep,’ and ‘fruit’ in English, are treated as collectives and represented by the singular. As noted above, English and Hebrew differ in their distribution of countables and collectives. Collectives occur in both grammatical genders. A collective singular may not agree in number with other words in the sentence syntactically related to it (cf. English ‘the sheep are in the field’ versus ‘the wheat is…’; 6.6); thus a singular collective noun can govern a plural verb. We distinguish between words in Hebrew that are conventionally collective (i.e., words almost always represented in the singular) and those that are nonconventionally collective (i.e., words that are often represented by the plural but for contextual reasons may be represented by a collective)."
When I checked Brown-Driver-Briggs' Hebrew-English Lexicon, it said the usage in Joshua 5:15 is an example of a "dual" form. In other words, the singular is used to describe a "pair" of sandals rather than just one shoe. That is why translations usually render with the plural "sandals" although the word is grammatically singular or "dual." Compare Amos 2:6; 8:6.
This subject also makes me wonder about Augustine of Hippo's famous Latin words, inquietum est cor nostrum, which are usually translated "our hearts are restless."
6 comments:
There is a nuance to this, see:-
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar/88._Of_the_Dual
"In Hebrew, however, it is almost exclusively used to denote those objects which naturally occur in pairs"
I appreciate the Gesenius reference. That also motivated me to consult Waltke again, but section 7.3 this time of his Syntax. Here is what his book states:
"Hebrew like other languages (e.g., Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and certain Slavic languages) has a morphological dual, used chiefly to refer to two paired objects.9 Not all dual forms have only dual reference; some serve as plural forms. The nearest English equivalent to the Hebrew dual is provided by expressions like ‘a pair of’ (e.g., ‘a pair of socks’) or ‘both’ (e.g., ‘both hands’). As with these
English equivalents, the Hebrew dual is used to refer to certain objects that occur in pairs (e.g., ‘a pair of clubs,’ ‘a pair of earrings’) and even to refer to objects that are in fact singular (e.g., ‘a pair of trousers,’ ‘a pair of scissors,’ etc.). Hebrew also
uses its dual to refer to phenomena distinct from those comparably marked in other languages. The uses of dual can be analyzed according to the referents of the terms: natural pairs and set expressions of time and measurement. A few words, morphologically dual, show no semantic or syntactic features of the dual.
b) Natural pairs in the dual usually involve paired human or animal body parts, although not all such occur in the dual."
[END OF QUOTE]
I'd like to read Gesenius later this evening, but what you posted was helpful. And the upshot of Waltke's treatment of the dual form is that he mentions we should understand verses like Joshua 5:15 as "(a pair) of sandals."
Smyth's Greek grammar likewise discusses the Greek dual, which differs from the Hebrew in an important way:
"There are three numbers [in Greek]: singular, dual, and plural. The dual speaks of two or a pair, as τὼ ὀφθαλμώ the two eyes; but it is not often used, and the plural (which denotes more than one) is frequently substituted for it (οἱ ὀφθαλμοί the eyes)."
http://jbq.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/403/jbq_403_mayim.pdf
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar/87._Of_the_Plural
Thanks for Gesenius. I used to own the physical book, but sold it years ago. Now it's great to see the work online along with his lexicon.
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