avril 2020 – Liber radicum, Sefer ha-shorashim

The paronymic way of interpreting בָּכָא bākā in בְּעֵמֶק הַבָּכָא bə–‘ēmeq ha-bākā (Psalms 84:7) as connected with the root בכי/–ה bky/-h “to cry” is already attested in the Septuagint where the Hebrew phrase is rendered by εἰς τὴν κοιλάδα τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος. ¹ This translation paved the way to the emergence of the notion of the Vale of tears as a place of penitence in the afterworld, as in a word-by-word commentary of the verse in the Talmud of Babylon (‘Eruvin 19a): Continuer la lecture de « Bə-‘ēmeq ha-bākā (Psalms 84:7): non-lachrymose interpretations of the verse in David Qimḥi’s Commentary »

On wordplay in the Hebrew original Book of Psalms and its rendering in the Septuagint, see Backfish E. H. P. Hebrew Wordplay and Septuagint Translation Technique in the Fourth Book of the Psalter. London: T&T Clark, 2019. [↩]

Présentation

Ce carnet de recherche accompagne le projet d'édition du « Sefer ha-shorashim » de David Qimḥi (c.1160 - c.1235), qui présente, dans l’ordre alphabétique, les racines permettant de regrouper commodément tous les mots de l’hébreu biblique. C'est un instrument indispensable à la compréhension du texte sacré, dans les communautés juives à l’époque médiévale, puis chez les humanistes chrétiens dès les prémices de la Renaissance.

David Qimḥi’s Sefer ha-Shorashim providing, in alphabetical order, the roots of all the words present in the Hebrew Bible, has rapidly become an indispensable tool for the understanding of the sacred text, in the Jewish communities during the Middle ages, and later for the Christians Hebraists from the early Renaissance onwards.