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Document Details :

Title: The reading of Ezekiel 19,7a
Subtitle: A proposal
Author(s): BEGG, C.
Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Volume: 65    Issue: 4   Date: December 1989   
Pages: 370-380
DOI: 10.2143/ETL.65.4.556426

Abstract :
Ezek 19,7a (MT) states concerning the 'lion' whose fate 19,5-9 laments wayyēdda' 'almenôtāw we'ārēhem heḥerib. The rendering of the first two words in this sequence which spontaneously suggests itself is 'he knew his widows'. Over the years, scholars have qualified the phrase so understood as 'impossible', 'incomprehensible', 'nonsense', etc. The factors prompting such epithets are various. For one thing, understood as above, the phrase 'fall out' of the leonine imagery of the context: 'knowing widows' is something humans do, not lions. Again (on the above rendition) 7aa fails to provide a fitting parallel to 7ab; the latter's object 'their cities' would require a 'place of habitation' rather than a group of persons ('widows') as object likewise in the former. Finally, there is the consideration that none of the ancient versions agree precisely with MT's reading (in the rendition cited).

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