קוד: אל ירושלם, לירושלם, ירושלמה בתנ"ך
סוג: פרטים1
מאת: אבנר רמו
אל:
In the Book of Chronicles we read:
ויסבו ביהודה, ויקבצו את הלוים מכל ערי יהודה וראשי האבות לישראל; ויבאו אל ירושלם. - - -
“And they went about in Judah, and gathered the Levites out of all the cities of Judah, and the heads of fathers' houses of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem” (2 Ch 23:2).
We also read in this Book:
אך אנשים מאשר ומנשה ומזבלון - -נכנעו, ויבאו לירושלם. - --
“Nevertheless divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem” (2 Ch 30:11).
In the Book of Kings we read:
ותבא ירושלמה בחיל כבד מאד, גמלים נשאים בשמים וזהב רב מאד ואבן יקרה; ותבא אל - -
שלמה ותדבר אליו את כל אשר היה עם לבבה. - -
“And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bore spices and gold very much, and precious stones; and when she was come to Solomon, she spoke with him of all that was in her heart” (1 Ki 10:2).
Similarly we read in the Book of Ezekiel:
ותשא אתי רוח בין הארץ ובין השמים ותבא אתי ירושלמה במראות אלהים, אל פתח שער - -
הפנימית הפונה צפונה, אשר שם מושב סמל הקנאה המקנה. -
“And a wind lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the gate of the inner court that looks toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy” (Eze 8:3).
These examples indicate that in biblical Hebrew, there are three different ways to express the English word: “to.” One can use an independent word אל (el) between the verb and the subject, or to attach, after the verb, the letter ל (l) as a prefix to the subject, or to attach a ה (h) letter as a postfix to the subject. When the biblical subject is Jerusalem, the total occurrence of these Hebrew modes of: “to” are 17, 35, and 5, respectively.
Yet we also find biblical verses where none of these methods is used, while the content (as well as the understanding of the translators, and Modern Hebrew) suggests that they should be there. Here are several examples:
In the Book of Judges we find: ויביאהו ירושלם, וימת שם - “And they brought him [to] Jerusalem, and he died there” (Jud 1:7).
In the Book of Samuel we find: ויקח דוד את ראש הפלשתי, ויבאהו ירושלם - - “And David took the head of the philistine, and brought it [to] Jerusalem” (1 Sam 17:54).
In the Book of Kings we find:
וירכבהו עבדיו מת ממגדו, ויבאהו ירושלם, ויקברהו בקברתו;
“And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and brought him [to] Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulcher” (2 Ki 23:30).
In the Book of Chronicles we find:
ואת אמציהו מלך יהודה בן יואש בן יהואחז, תפש יואש מלך ישראל בבית שמש; ויביאהו - - - - -
ירושלם,
“And Joash king of Israel, took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Joash, the son of Jehoahaz, at Beth-shemesh, and brought him [to] Jerusalem” (2 Ch 25:23).
For analyzing the distribution of the absence of a Hebrew equivalent of the Greek (and English) “to”, I studied all the biblical verses that contain verbs relating to ירושלם - “Jerusalem” as the subject.
Book Total mentions of Jerusalem Number of cases lacking a Hebrew analog to “to”
Joshua 9 0 Judges 4 1 (1:7) 1 Samuel 1 1 (17:54) 2 Samuel 30 15 (5:6; 8:7; 10:14; 12:31; 14:23; 15:8, 29, 37; 16:15; 17:20; 19:26, 35; 20:3; 24:8, 16) 1 Kings 28 5 (3:15; 8:1; 12:18, 21, 28) 2 Kings 58 8 (14:13; 16:5; 18:17, 17; 23:20, 30; 24:10; 25:8) Isaiah 49 2 (7:1; 66:20) Jeremiah 103 2 (27:3; 35:11) Ezekiel 26 1 (17:12) Minor Prophets 63 0 Psalms 17 0 Canticles 8 0 Ecclesiastes 5 0 Lamentations 7 0 Esther 1 0 Daniel 9 1 (1:1)
Ezra 47 6 (3:8; 7:8; 8:31, 32; 10:7, 9) Nehemiah 36 0 1 Chronicles 24 5 (11:4; 18:7; 19:15; 20:3; 21:4) 2 Chronicles 121 12 (2:15; 10:18; 11:1, 16; 14:14; 15:10; 19:8; 20:28; 25:23; 30:13; 33:13; 35:24)
However, it is obvious that verse Is 7:1 is a copy of verse 2 Ki 16:5 (or vice-versa).
Verses: 1 Ch 11:4; 18:7; 19:15; 20:3; 21:4; 2 Ch 10:18; 11:1; and 35:24 appear as copies of verses: 2 Sam 5:6; 8:7; 10:14; 12:31; 24:8; 1 Ki 12:18; 12:21; 2 Ki 35:24), respectively, and could not be viewed as independent examples.
In addition, the same event is mentioned in verses: 2 Ki 24:10; 25:8; Jer 35:11; Eze 17:12; and Dan 1:1, and they are likely to be copies of one verse.
We may therefore conclude the absence of a grammatically required Hebrew analog of the English “to” occurs mainly in the 2nd book of Samuel, the Books of Kings, the Book of Ezra, and the 2nd Book of Chronicles.
Furthermore, the expression: אל ירושלם - (el-yerushalaim) - “to Jerusalem” does not appear in the Books of Samuel or Kings, while in the Book of Ezra it appears three times (Ezr 3:1; 7:7, 9).
The Hebrew לירושלם (leyerushalaim) - “to Jerusalem” does not appear in the Books of Samuel or 1st Kings. It appears three times in the 2nd Book of Kings (2 Ki 18:22; 23:4, 6), and five times in the Book of Ezra (Ezr 1:3, 11; 2:1; 3:8; 8:20).
The third variant: ירושלמה (yerushalaimah) - “to Jerusalem” does not appear in the Books of Samuel or Ezra, while in the Book of Kings it appears twice (1 Ki 10:2; 2 Ki 9:28).
The absence of a Hebrew equivalent of the English “to” between a verb and Jerusalem as a subject, occurs in the Books of 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, and Ezra, too often to be the result of haplography. It seems also unlikely that these omissions were carried out intentionally by late scribes. On the other hand the parallel scarcity of all the biblical equivalents of the English “to” in verses mentioning Jerusalem in these books, suggests that such a word, a prefix, or a postfix, may have not been used often in the language spoken in the periods when these books were composed.
This conclusion cannot be applied to the 2nd Book of Chronicles were all the three Hebrew equivalents of the English “to” are also found in a significant numbers. It is possible that while gleaning information from several older biblical books, the writer of 2nd Book of Chronicles had also employed some of the language found there.
The conclusions obtained from the above analysis may be valid only for the single biblical subject tested here which was ירושלם - “Jerusalem” (with all the biblical verbs that this subjects was associated with).
However, the validity of these conclusions would be much more significant if similar results would be obtained from the analysis of all the associations of a single biblical verb (or a small group of verbs) with all its subjects.
For the analysis I chose the following verbs: ויבאו - “and they came”, ותבא - “and she came”, and ויבאהו and ויביאהו both mean “and he brought it (or him)”, all these verbs are from the root בוא (bva), and they appear in the Hebrew Bible 201, 32, and 20 times respectively.
Book Total of the chosen verbs Number of those lacking a Hebrew analog to “to”
Genesis 20 1 (45:25)
Exodus 15 1 (19:2)
Numbers 12 3 (20:1, 22; 22:39)
Deuteronomy 2 0
Joshua 16 3 (2:1; 6:11; 8:19)
Judges 18 4 (1:7; 9:22; 18:2; 20:26)
1 Samuel 27 2 (11:4; 17:54)
2 Samuel 24 7 (2:29; 4:7; 10:2, 14, 16; 24:7, 8)
1 Kings 22 3 (11:18, 18; 14:4)
2 Kings 29 6 (2:4; 10:21; 11:18; 23:30; 25:7, 26)
Isaiah 3 0
Jeremiah 13 2 (43:7; 52:11)
Ezekiel 9 0
Minor Prophets 2 0
Psalms, Job, Ruth 8 0
Daniel, Nehemiah 2 0
1 Chronicles 12 1 (19:15)
2 Chronicles 19 3 (20:28; 23:17; 25:23).
This analysis shows that more than one third of all biblical verses that contain these selected verbs (associated with any subject) and that lack the Hebrew equivalent of the English “to” appear in the 2nd Book of Samuel and the 2nd Book of Kings. However, both these Biblical books also have significant numbers of other verses that contain these verbs with the Hebrew equivalents of the English “to.”
Therefore, it seems that when the 2nd Book of Samuel and the 2nd Book of Kings where written, the spoken language allowed the use of such verbs with or without the Hebrew equivalents of the English “to”, yet for unknown reason the lack of Hebrew equivalent of “to” was much more common when the subject was ירושלם - “Jerusalem.” This conclusion is supported by the fact that in the Book of Ezra, except for the subject “Jerusalem”, all the verbs with any other subject never lack (the needed) the Hebrew equivalents of the English “to