Disclaimer: This review is on the 1st edition. I have not as of yet had the opportunity (or extra cash) to buy the 2nd edition. However, from what I’ve seen briefly of the 2nd edition, I don’t think too much of what I say below would change.

I was asked in a blog post to share my thoughts on Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook, by Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Victoria Hoffer, & Rebecca Abts Wright, and my comment just became too long, so I figured I’d post about it.

I used Kittel for first year Hebrew as a student in my undergrad and also use it as a teacher (laypeople, at the moment). One of the reasons I decided to use it when teaching is that I loved it as a student. In case you’re confused about the title of my post, we affectionately called the book “Bonnie” in my undergrad (a practice I continue with my students).

The book is very much what the subtitle says: “text and workbook.” It’s not a grammar, and it can’t really be used as one, so if the student wanted a beginning reference grammar he or she would require a supplemental book. However, for first year students I don’t really think that’s necessary. She does have a sizable and easy to read section in the back with all the verbal paradigms, which is nice for reference.

One of the reasons I love Bonnie is because it’s so inductive. Literally, lesson one (after learning the aleph-bet) starts you reading the Hebrew text. While I’ve not looked at every first-year Hebrew textbook out there, so far, Kittel’s is the only one I’ve found that does such a great job of getting you into the text quickly and easily. She accomplishes this by teaching what she feels are the most common elements of Hebrew first, and going on from there.

Now, some who have learned a little bit less inductively (which is most) might find the book to be a bit “disorganized,” but to some extent that is the nature of inductive study. She uses an example text (usually a phrase or sentence) for each lesson which exemplifies the aspects of Hebrew she wants to teach. Lesson One starts with ויאמר יהוה. Yes, she starts with the wayyiqtol 3ms, which is literally EVERYWHERE in the Hebrew Bible. The student doesn’t learn another PGN until several lessons later, and that’s the 3mp – finally, quite a few lessons later she springs the whole prefix paradigm on you. Intermingled are other new aspects – the qatal form, the Pi’el, singular and plural masculine nouns, etc. She almost always introduces a new form, stem, etc in part before she introduces it in full, using only elements the student already knows. Therefore, she might seem to “skip around” a lot – but once again, this isn’t a grammar, it’s a textbook.

It is also very much a workbook. She guides the student step by step through the lesson verse – asking key questions to nudge them in the right direction, making him or her fill in blanks along the way, and introducing new elements as one comes to them in the verse. As the student masters new concepts, she starts saying things like, “of course, you know by now that ….. means/is a _____:” and moves on quickly. Each lesson usually ends with some supplemental grammatical information, exercises (translation, as well as other types) that hammer on the new concepts learned that lesson, and instructions to memorize some more vocab (out of her list found at the back of the book).

She teaches parsing (and everything else) VERY diagnostically, so you could, theoretically, get away without ever memorizingverbal or noun paradigms when using her book (though she does recommend learning some of them throughout the book, she does such a great job there is very little that is required to be memorized). To some extent, how much needs to be memorized depends on the teacher. Nevertheless, her key word is recognize, not memorize. This last bit is one of the reasons I like using it for teaching the layperson: memorizing a ton of paradigms can be very daunting and a major stumbling block, and for just a 1st year reading knowledge of Hebrew, frankly, isn’t necessary.

Finally, at the end of the book she provides notes on reading and translating several handfuls of prolonged biblical texts (mostly narrative, some poetry at the end) that are meant to be worked through when the student reaches a particular lesson and has certain concepts under their belt (they start somewhere between lessons 12 and 19). I didn’t do this in my undergrad, as it’s optional, until after the fact, when I worked through several on my own. These help the student to begin working through longer texts using the knowledge they’ve learned, with some help from Bonnie.

This is not to say that the book doesn’t have it’s faults. There are things that I would change if I were writing a similar textbook (as I hope to do someday, geared for lay people, specifically). But, all-in-all, I still to this day (even though I’ve been shown other books that claim to be inductive) have yet to find a 1st year Hebrew textbook that does quite the job she does of getting a beginning student reading Hebrew quickly, and does it in an enjoyable way.

With the Fall semester just around the corner, it’s time for my beginning of semester run-down of classes. This semester is going to be a doozy – I have 5 resident classes and 1 SemLink (GCTS’s distance ed), not to mention doctoral apps and ministry at church (including the Hebrew class that I am now teaching).

Advanced Hebrew Grammar with Tom Petter
Calvin and I are really looking forward to this. It’s an independent study, but since we’re both taking it we’ll essentially be doing all the work together – which will include translating and syntactically tagging the entire book of Judges. I’m excited to see how this goes.

Intermediate Greek with Dave Mathewson
I’m kinda neutral towards this class – it’s required for my MABL and I really need it anyways to help further cement my Greek. But, as I’ve mentioned before on multiple occasions, Greek isn’t really my first love. However, I’ve heard that Dr. Mathewson has a different take on the Greek verbal system than we learned in Greek I & II so that should be at least mildly interesting to learn about.

Prophetical Books with Donna Petter
This is the first class I will have taken with the other Petter at GCTS, so I’m curious to see what her teaching style is like. You may remember that I took Poetical Books with Doug Stuart last semester and had fun typing my Lamentations exegesis paper, which has shown up in various parts over the summer on this blog. This time, I’m hoping to be able to do something in Jeremiah. I may also find out if I can sub in a research paper instead of the exegesis paper – since I’ve already done one at the 700 level.

Exegesis of James with Sean McDonough
I took Exegesis of John, my required Gospel exegesis course this past summer, and now I’m getting the epistle requirement out of the way this fall. I am, of course, neatly avoiding Paul. James is one of my favorite NT books, so I’m sure this class will present some fun tidbits for thought (even if it is more GREEK).

Middle Egyptian I with Alejandro Botta
We are taking advantage of the BTI again this year, and will be taking this class at Boston University. From what I understand, it’s a joint offering from the School of Theology and the Archaeology Department. We already have our textbooks for this one (just came in today!) and I’m pretty psyched. It’s going to be a lot of work, but worth it, I think.

Contemporary Theology and Theologians
This is the SemLink that I have had all summer to work on but have barely touched. Unfortunately, between two summer classes and visiting family for the past 3 weeks, I haven’t had a whole lot of spare time. That means this is essentially a sixth class I have to do this semester, which will make my life very hectic, to say the least. Nevertheless, I am and have been looking forward to some of the reading.

The community lament, the funeral song, and the city lament appear to be the main influences on the poetry of Lamentations. In chapter two, the community lament is particularly strong, though it consists only of complaint and petition. In verses 18-22, several points of comparison can be made with the three forms summarized above:

18-19: The initial address to the wall is a characteristic found in the city lament.¹ These verses also contain the summons to mourn found in the qinah form. While not exactly a petition itself, the poet here calls on Daughter Zion to petition God. There is also a continuation of the complaint in the description of the condition of the children in verse 19.

20: The standard petition of the community lament is found here in the mouth of the city – an imperative directed at God. In this case, ראה and נבט are the verbs chosen to encourage God to act. Of course, the fact that the poet demands that God “look” indicates that he is not currently “looking,” therefore hints at the divine abandonment motif of city laments (also featured frequently in individual laments). Also in this verse is the hint of reprimand and incredulity that is often found in the psalmic laments: because of God’s actions XY and Z has occurred – does God really want XY and Z to continue?

21-22: The poet returns to the complaint against God. God is accused of slaughtering the people without mercy, and no one has escaped his wrath. This is, of course, also a general description of the distress in correlation to the qinah. As in the beginning of the chapter, the blame continues to be assigned to the deity – echoes of the city lament. Finally, in these last two verses as well as verse 20, there is the possibility that that the personification of the city as a woman could be an Israelite version of the “weeping goddess” of the city lament.

Verses 20-22 in and of themselves are a mini-lament, since they are put as a unit into the mouth of Daughter Zion. She begins with a petition, and moves on to the complaint, as noted above.

Obviously a tone of sorrow and mourning permeates the entire passage, though anger is especially prominent in chapter two. After evaluating the forms most likely to have influenced chapter two and specifically verses 18-22, one could indeed say that Lamentations is a mixture of forms. The community lament is especially prominent in chapter two, and several features of the Mesopotamian city lament can also be seen. Whether or not the qinah form had a real influence on this chapter is debatable; a general feeling of lamentation is of course common to all three forms. Nevertheless, chapter two cannot be pinpointed into any one form. The variety of motifs drawn together, however, is “not something to be scoffed at or derided, but should be celebrated and enjoyed.”² It is difficult to tell if the pulling of various types of lament was intentional; either way, the poet shows his skill in weaving a dramatic and emotional portrayal of the grief of the people, pulling in whatever resources he had available, whether consciously or subconsciously.

Whether one wants to create a new form, as does Berlin, or be satisfied identifying the poem as a creative mixture of several types of forms, the end result is one of emotional rawness that probably would have been used by the community in their mourning of the destruction of Jerusalem and the death and exile of many of her people. In this respect, it could have been used very much as a metaphorical dirge. Certainly, it is very unlikely that the poem was used to commemorate the re-building of the temple, as it is theorized that some city laments were used. The closest connections for use are those of the community lament, which later became integrated into the formal liturgy of the community.³

My next two posts on Lamentations will focus on identifying the form of Lamentations 2 (though it applies generally to Lamentations as a whole as well). Keep in mind that this is a very broad overview of the issues as part of a larger paper, so there is obviously a lot here that could be treated much more in depth. Once again, enjoy, and comments are always welcome!

The genre of Lamentations seems almost laughably obvious, as it is reflected in the English title. Lamentations is part of the broad category of lament literature, a genre which at its core is “a cry uttered when life falls apart.”¹ The book is composed of five separate “laments.” Chapter two is one of these laments, and verses 18-22 are one part of the lament of chapter two. Identifying the type of lament in chapter two, and the laments of Lamentations as a whole, is more complex.

The most well known biblical laments are, of course, the psalmic laments, which are in and of themselves broken down into two types: the individual and the community lament. Other forms of lament are the dirge (funeral lament) and the city lament. The problem with Lamentations, especially chapters one, two, and four, is that it does not fit neatly into any of the lament forms named above. That is to say, it is not just that the lament is missing parts of a typical community lament, for instance, but rather that it appears to be a mixture of several types of laments. Chapter two is one of these “hybrid” forms.

The first type of lament that has similarities to the chapter in question is the community lament. The community lament generally consists of the following parts:²

1. Address to God
2. Complaint (against God, themselves, and/or the enemy)
3. Review of God’s past acts
4. Petition
5. Divine response³
6. Vow to praise

In the community lament, the community cries out to God because of a disaster by which the whole people are affected. The community lament seeks to prompt God to action to help and deliver his people. In many ways, chapter two has similarities with the community lament. A “disaster par excellence” was at hand, and the community cries out to God in the hopes that he will act, or in the case of chapter two, have mercy after all.⁴ However, unlike the community (or individual) lament, the chapter consists entirely of the complaint and petition portions of the lament. There is no summary of God’s past gracious acts and no hint of a response from God. Chapter two, especially, is entirely consumed by reviewing not the gracious acts of God but the recent destructive acts of God (vs. 1-18; complaint against God) and a demand for God to act (vs. 19-22; petition). Certainly, there is no vow of praise (or an expression of confidence, as in the related individual lament). One might then ask, can chapter two really be called a community lament in form, when it is missing so many of the crucial pieces of the lament?

Another possibility that may have had influence on Lamentations chapter two is the funeral dirge, or qinah form. Examples of actual dirges in the Bible are limited, but the prophets make use of the dirge form metaphorically in many instances.⁵ Elements of a dirge may include any of the following:⁶

1. Announcement that a death has occurred
2. Summons to mourn
3. Thematic statement of finality
4. Contrast motif
5. Reference to the impact of the demise upon immediate bystanders
6. Description of a general state of distress

The opening איכה of Lamentations 2 might be said to have similarities to a dirge. Additionally, there is a clear “summons to mourn” and certainly a description of suffering. Nevertheless, a true qinah was used for mourning over the death of an individual; any similarities to the dirge in Lamentations 2 are purely metaphorical in nature. Adele Berlin notes the similarities of the poems in Lamentations to both a community lament and a dirge, and suggests a new form for the laments that is part community lament, part dirge, with a little bit of uniqueness thrown in: the Jerusalem lament.⁷

The final type of lament that has been compared extensively to the laments of Lamentations is the Mesopotamian city lament. These laments, which “describe the destruction of particular cities and their important shrines,” date to the 2nd millennium BCE.⁸ The features of a city lament are as follows:⁹

1. A somber and mournful mood
2. Specific literary techniques: interchange of speakers, contrast and reversal, focus on a deity, kirugu form, lists
3. Divine abandonment
4. Assignment of responsibility to divine council
5. Divine agent of destruction
6. Destruction of the city, sanctuary, people, and their customs
7. A weeping goddess
8. Lamentation
9. Restoration of the city and return of the gods

F. W. Dobbs-Allsop has compared and contrasted each of these elements with the poems in Lamentations and comes to the conclusion that they have many features in common. However, he notes that ultimately the author of Lamentations does not copy exactly the city lament, but molds it to Israelite customs and beliefs.¹⁰ Most scholars now admit at least some similarities between Lamentations and the Mesopotamian city lament genre, though not all agree that the city lament is the most important influence on Lamentations.¹¹

What follows is a section from my paper which summarizes the various possibilities regarding the purpose behind the use of an acrostic in Lamentations. At the moment, I am most convinced of the idea that the acrostic (at least here) somehow expresses completeness. However, I am open to other convincing arguments!

Lamentations 2:18-22 is part of a chapter, indeed a book, that makes use of the literary device of the acrostic. Each of the five chapters has 22 stanzas, the number of letters in the Hebrew alephbet. In chapter one, each stanza has three lines, with the exception of verse 7. The first line in each stanza begins with a consecutive letter of the alephbet. In chapter two, the chapter in which the passage under consideration here resides, each stanza also has three lines, and again the first line in each stanza begins with a consecutive letter of the alephbet. Chapter three also has three lines per stanza, however in this chapter each line of every stanza begins with its respective letter.¹ Chapter four has two lines per stanza, and again, the first line of each stanza begins with its respective letter. Chapter five is the only anomaly, as the letters of the alephbet are not actually utilized in an acrostic form. However, there are still exactly 22 single line stanzas in chapter five. This seems to be too close to the acrostic form to be a coincidence.

Many have speculated on why the author used the acrostic so extensively. The acrostic is a known literary device, and in fact shows up in several other places in the Bible, Psalms 119 being the most well known.² For a book filled with such raw emotion, it seems strange to impose such a rigid structure on the text. There are several theories as to the purpose of acrostics generally, and several more on why the poems in Lamentations, specifically, appear in acrostic form.

Acrostics are thought to serve one or more of several possible purposes. Later literature could have utilized the acrostic because of some belief in the magical power of the alephbet; however, this was a later development and highly unlikely to have been involved in the purpose of the acrostics in Lamentations, as the book is dated too early for this to be an influence.³ The second option and probably at least part of the reason for the use of the acrostic in Lamentations is that it was a pedagogical tool designed to aid in memorization (a mnemonic device).⁴ A third possibility is that using an acrostic allowed the author to show the full extent of his skill in vocabulary and arrangement of the poem.⁵

Why use acrostics in Lamentations? The suggestion has been made, the artificial feeling of the acrostic having been noted, that the acrostic form was a later addition to the poems and thus meaning should not be gleaned from its usage.⁶ However, the organization of the five poems with an intensified acrostic at the middle in chapter three, shorter stanzas in chapter four, and a quasi-acrostic in chapter five, seems to suggest a more meaningful purpose behind the arrangement.⁷ There is one other proposed purpose of the acrostic that is most prominent in Lamentations: the acrostic gives a feeling of completeness. In Lamentations, the completeness would not be the feeling of having exhausted the topic in each poem, but in having expressed the completeness of the grief and anguish of the poet, a “complete cleansing,” so to speak.⁸ In the historical books, an account is given of the events behind the grief of Lamentations. However, whereas the descriptions of the events that would lead to the writing of Lamentations were matter-of-fact, even cold, in the historical accounts, in Lamentations the stark, heart-wrenching reality of what this judgment from God meant for the people is eloquently elucidated. Their grief is all-encompassing, and they are utterly spent in their sorrow.

What follows is the remainder of my text criticism for this passage. Then we can move on to more exciting topics. (Don’t tell Calvin I said that!) Seriously, this is probably the most in depth text crit I’ve done as of yet in my academic career, and it was, admittedly, pretty interesting. The issues that brought me the most glee were pondering over the emendation possibilities in the first line and, of course, axing the fourth line in verse 19. Also, it was fun to see how the versions dealt with a hapax (below), as well as deciding whether to emend the final two words in the passage. Now, without further ado…

Verse 20

פרים
     The LXX adds κοιλας αυτων. This is likely merely an attempt to make more clear the meaning of פרים, rather than reflective of a different Hebrew text. The Targums also follow the LXX reading, most likely for the same reason.

עללי טפחים
     The second word is a hapax legomenon. The translations of the two word phrase in the versions are very different from one another, indicating that there was some lack of clarity as to the meaning of the word (and thus phrase). The LXX has what some have regarded as a “double translation.” The first translation reads somewhat nonsensical: “a cook made a gleaning,” and is then followed by a more clear statement, but lacking words to translate in the Hebrew text, “will the children who suckle the breast be slain?” Most likely, rather than reflecting a phrase that has fallen out of the Hebrew text, the second translation is an attempt by a later copyist to clarify the first, and both refer to the עללי טפחים. The verb φονευθησονται may be an attempt to understand טפח with the root תבח, or it could be another double translation of the Hebrew יהרג in the third line.¹ The Syriac reads, “dashed in pieces,” the Targum, “infants wrapped in swaddling clothes,” and the Vulgate, “hand-breadth.” The variety of translations is enough to suggest that the issue is not a corruption, but difficulty translating the hapax.

Verse 21

לארץ חוצות
     The LXX has εις την εξοδον, “in the way out,” in some versions and εις γην εξοδων, “in the earth of the ways out,” in others. This is likely a corruption within the LXX, the latter being the more original translation and the former being an error.

נער וזקן
     Both the Targum and Syriac pluralize these two words, but the meaning remains the same either way. The LXX agrees with the MT in number and so the singular has been maintained here.

נפלו בחרב
     The LXX versions read almost unanimously, “are carried in captivity, by the sword and by hunger you killed…” The Syriac and Targum agree generally with the MT, and the additions or mistranslations in the LXX are probably an example of corruption within the LXX somewhere along the line.²

Verse 22

תקרא
     The LXX translates both as a second person singular and a third person singular in varying manuscripts. This is once again inner-Greek corruption and there is no further evidence of a corruption among the other versions.

מגורי
     The Hebrew root most likely means “terror,” but the LXX translates as “sojourning.” Both the Syriac and Vulgate offer translations that have something to do with fear, and the LXX translation is most likely reflective of a different understanding of the root of the Hebrew word.

טפחתי
     Another hapax occurs here, טפחתי, which comes from the same root, טפח, which caused problems earlier. Again the LXX misunderstands the root and translates as επεκρατησα, “rule over,” possibly itself a corruption of an original επεκροτησα, understood from the Aramaic טפח, “clap.”³ Either way, the translation makes no sense in context, so the MT version has been retained.

איבי כלם
     The LXX translates as “all my enemies.” This is an incorrect reading of the ambiguous consonantal text איבי כלם, which the Masoretes have pointed differently. The other versions agree with the MT except that the Syriac and Targum pluralize the noun and have a matching plural verb. Given the plural εχθρους, along with the evidence of a plural noun and verb in the Syriac and Targums, it is tempting to emend the text here. However, the MT has been retained for contextual reasons.⁴

Calvin has been bugging me to post more, and since I have a series of ready-made posts in my exegesis paper from the spring, I really have no excuse. As much as I’d love to jump to the topics that most interest me, I should probably start where I actually started in my paper: textual criticism.

For my fully reconstructed text, you may refer to this post.

My text criticism for this passage was pretty long, so I’m going to split it up into two posts. One caveat: this is from a paper I submitted for a class, so it’s in a more formal style than I usually employ when blogging. Enjoy!

Verse 18

צעק לבם
     The first two words are puzzling. The difficulty lies in determining to whom the 3mp pronoun on לב refers. Normally, one would look to the immediately preceding context. However, the most recent 3mp antecedent would be the איב or צר of verses 16-17, which unfortunately lacks sense in the context of 18-22. Many therefore choose to emend the text in some fashion, since there does not appear to be another obvious referent. Those who choose to emend these two words agree almost across the board that צעק should be emended to צעקי, changing the verb to a 2fs imperative from a 3ms perfect, on analogy to the two other 2fs imperatives in lines 2 and 3 of verse 18. Various proposals¹ have then been suggested on how to deal with לבם. However, the versions agree in every instance with the MT reading. Due to the lack of alternate textual evidence, the MT reading has been followed here.²

חומת
     There is some question of sense with this word as well. Many commentators choose to emend in various ways in conjunction with the final two words of the line (18c-c). The main difficulty appears to lie in an assumption that it would be nonsensical for the poet to address a wall.³ Some LXX manuscripts translate this word in the plural, Τειχη, rather than singular, which could be taken as evidence of some type of corruption.⁴ However, the majority of the evidence, including the Syriac and Aramaic versions, lies on the side of the MT, therefore the singular has been maintained here.

בת ציון
     The Greek equivalent of בת is missing in the earlier LXX manuscripts. While some have attempted to devise convoluted proposals as to how to how this is part of the corruption of חומת, a more simple explanation seems likely. Given that both חומת and בת end with ת, the lack of θυγατρος could be explained easily by haplography via homoeoteleuton. Either a Hebrew manuscript had experienced haplography prior to the Greek translation, or the word was in the Hebrew manuscript, and the LXX translator skipped over the word in his translation. It seems over the top to try and reconstruct a way that בת could have found its way into the text, where it was not originally, through a series of labyrinthine corruptions, simply because one has trouble understanding what could be meant by the address to the חומת

אל תדם בת עינך
     The LXX understands בת here as a vocative rather than as the head noun in a construct relationship with עינך. This is not a consonantal variant but either a misunderstanding of the Hebrew idiom בת עינך, or merely an interpretational choice, since the consonantal text is ambiguous.

Verse 19

בלילה
     The consonantal MT reads בליל. The final ה has been restored here, to match the Masoretic vocalization.

אשמרות
     Early LXX manuscripts read φυλακης σου, a singular noun with a second person singular possessive pronoun, versus the Hebrew plural noun lacking a possessive suffix. This most likely does not reflect a different Hebrew text but a stylistic choice on the part of the translator.⁵

< העטופים ברעב בראש כל חוצות >
     This line is most likely not original and has been removed. Verse 19 is a four-line stanza in the MT. This is the only four-line stanza in chapter two; the rest have three lines. On its own, this would not be enough of a reason to delete the final line, since there is no evidence among the versions as to a textual corruption. To delete a line on this basis alone seems to presuppose a greater understanding of Hebrew poetry than perhaps we really have.⁶ However, on a closer analysis of the structure of the stanza (as opposed to a cursory survey of how many lines each stanza has), this line sticks out rather pointedly, and doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the context of the verse. The content seems to serve no poetic function, is unnecessary to the meaning of the passage, and does nothing to move along the poetry, nor does it fit with the previous three parallel lines. It has the feel of a targumizing expansion, a line added to explain a little bit more about the עולל from the third line in the stanza. Of course, without textual variants one cannot be certain, but a side must be chosen one way or the other. Here, the decision has been made to cut the line from the reconstruction.

Mandy and I have joined that illustrious group of bloggers known as the Top 10. Our jump of 34 places was no doubt due to a heavy increase in the number of posts for June. We’ll see if we can continue the pace through July. Over the coming month you can look forward to additional posts on Job, Proverbs and Lamentations (Mandy promises!). Furthermore, expect some interaction with various topics that have been spinning around the Biblioblogosphere. If one of us is feeling exceptionally adventurous, Daniel and Tonya may even get their wish and receive a post that has something to do with Biblical Greek (to which Mandy responds, πτυω).

Most importantly, we want to take this moment to thank all of our readers. Without you, we wouldn’t even be in the Top 50. Thanks for taking the time to read our ramblings.

As promised, I am going to begin pulling sections out of the exegesis paper that I wrote for Dr. Stuart (Old Testament Poets) this past Spring semester, and posting them here. Since this was a Hebrew exegesis paper, the Hebrew text remains important throughout. What follows is my re-constructed text and my own translation of this passage. I will post text-critical and translation notes in further posts (otherwise this could get quite long).

18
צעק לבם אל אדני חומת בת ציון
הורידי כנחל דמעה יומם ולילה
אל תתני פוגת לך אל תדם בת עינך
19
קומי רני בלילה לראש אשמרות
שפכי כמים לבך נכח פני אדני
שאי אליו כפיך על נפש עולליך
20
ראה יהוה והביטה למי עללת כה
אם תאכלנה נשים פרים עללי טפחים
אם יהרג במקדש אדני כהן ונביא
21
שכבו לארץ חוצות נער וזקן
בתולתי ובחורי נפלו בחרב
הרגת ביום אפך טבחת לא חמלת
22
תקרא כיום מועד מגורי מסביב
ולא היה ביום אף יהוה פליט ושריד
אשר טפחתי ורביתי איבי כלם

18
Their heart cries out to Adonai.
O wall of Daughter Zion!
Bring down tears like a torrent
day and night
Do not allow yourself rest
Let not the pupil of your eye be still
19
Arise, cry aloud in the night
at the beginning of every watch
Pour out your heart like water
before the face of Adonai
Lift to him your palms
for the sake of the life of your children
20
“Look, O Yahweh, and see!
To whom have you inflicted in this way?
Should women eat their fruit
the children for whom they cared?
Should they be slain in the sanctuary of Adonai
the priest and the prophet?
21
On the ground, in the streets, they lay down
the youth and the elder
My young women and my young men
fell by the sword
You slew in the day of your anger
You slaughtered mercilessly
22
You summoned like a feast day
my terrors from all around
And there was not, in the day of the anger of Yahweh,
an escapee or a survivor
Those whom I cared for and reared
my enemy destroyed them”

Calvin already posted his end of semester summary, so I figured I’d copy him and give some thoughts on my classes.

Epigraphic Hebrew – This independent study with Tom Petter was great fun (especially since Calvin and I were able to work on it together). It also connected to History of Israelite Religions a little bit, since I did my paper for that class on the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions, which we translated for this class. I always enjoy it when my classes seem to fit together well, as it cements what I’m learning.

History of Israelite Religions – Calvin has sort of already beat me to the punch since we took three classes together this semester. However, I too enjoyed this class at Boston University. My paper on Asherah in the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions was nothing new, but I learned a ton and enjoyed researching it. I think I have now read or skimmed almost all of the major scholars (with works in English) who discuss this issue, which makes me feel good.

Greek II – What else is there to say, other than this was the second half of Greek? As I’ve mentioned before, Greekand I are not good friends, but we force ourselves to get along out of necessity. And it’s a good thing, because between Interpreting the New Testament, two NT exegesis courses, and Intermediate Greek, all classes I need to take within the next year, Greek and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other.

Old Testament Poetical Books – Calvin gave a good summary of the class itself, but I, of course, had a different paper topic. I chose Lamentations 2:18-22, and only wish I could have had more time to go even deeper than I did. My paper was just a little under 50 pages, and that was only scratching the surface. Lamentations is my new favorite book of the Bible, and I’m looking forward to doing more work with it in the future. Don’t be surprised if you see posts on Lam. 2:18-22, or Lamentations in general, showing up frequently this summer.

Thus ends two years here at GCTS. I have one more to go, and can’t believe how fast it’s gone!