Special Issue IOSOT 2013 - Books and Journals

104 D. Pardee / Vetus Testamentum IOSOT (2013) 99-108
Other scholars repoint to mêrammeh “deals treachery”.16 The semantics of
Berger’s interpretation of nṣl mrmh is doubtful, but the parallelism is close to
that of xii 17 (mirmâ object of unexpressed verb, that of the first line doing
“double duty”). This very likeness to another proverb hints at a textual corruption
of some kind in the present text—or a daring use of nṣl which was sure to
be understood because of the poetic structure.17 In any case, the problem with
this verse lies in the word mirmâ and not in the usage of yāpīaḥ, which fills its
regular syntactic niche.
Prov. vi 19
yāpîaḥ kĕzābîm ʿēd šāqer
“. . . a lying witness (who is) a perjurer”.
This line is the sixth element in a 6 // 7 parallelism of the x + 1 type.18 Though
the double formulation constitutes a difficulty (probably a “kith and kin”
phrase whose purpose is to provide the desired length: 8 // 10 syllables), its
position in the development of the parallelism precludes any attempt to interpret
yāpîaḥ as a verb. It can only be classified as a noun (preceded by “eyes”,
“tongue”, “hands”, “heart”, “feet”) or as a verbal adjective (followed by “one who
sends”). Whatever the precise grammatical category to which it is assigned
(see discussion below, at etymology), yāpîaḥ is here, as elsewhere in Proverbs,
semantically and syntactically interchangeable with ʿēd.
A comparable form of ypḥ occurs in parallelism with ʿēd in Ps. xxvii 12:
ʾal-tittĕnēnî bĕnepeš ṣārāy
kî qāmû-bî ʿēdê-šeqer
wîpēaḥ ḥāmās
“Do not put me into the gullet of my adversaries
When perjuring witnesses testify against me,
Even witnesses (bent on) violence”.19
16) McKane, p. 232; Scott, p. 97; Toy, pp. 297, 302 mdmh.
17) Compare the double sense of yšlm “recompense (with good)” and “recompense (with evil)” in
Prov. xi 31—discussed recently in detail by James Barr, „bʾrṣ~molis: Prov. xi.31, I Pet. iv.l8”, JSS 20
(1975), pp. 149-64, esp. p. 161.
18) This type of parallelism has been studied in detail by, for example, W. M. W. Roth, Numerical
Sayings in the Old Testament, SVT 13 (1965), and Stanley Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of
Israel (Chicago, 1963/73), pp. 18-24.
19) Compare ʿēdê ḥāmās Ps. xxxv 11; ʿēd ḥāmās Ex. xxiii 1, Deut. xix 16; Dahood, CBQ 20 (1958),
p. 47, n. 21.