Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?

by Little Bo Peep 763 Replies latest watchtower bible

Alleymom

I used my Even-Shoshan Hebrew Concordance to find the verses in which zeh + duration occurs. The English translation is the NASB.
Gen. 27:36 Then he said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times?
Gen. 31:38 [Jacob speaking to Labab] "These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks."
Gen. 31:41 "These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you changed my wages ten times.
Gen. 43:10 "For if we had not delayed, surely by now we could have returned twice." [lit. zeh + "two times"]
Gen. 45:6 [Joseph speaking to his brothers] "For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.
Numbers 22:28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"
Numbers 22:32 And the angel of the Lord said to him, "Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out as an adversary, because your way was contrary to me.
Numbers 22:33 "But the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now, and let her live."
Numbers 24:10 Then Balak's anger burned against Balaam, and he struck his hands together; and Balak said to Balaam, "I called you to curse my enemies, but behold, you have persisted in blessing them these three times!
In the next three verses, Moses is speaking to the children of Israel and we see the phrase "THESE forty years" in each verse. According to Deuteronomy 1:1 Moses spoke these words to the children of Israel "in the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month."
Deuteronomy 2:7 "For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing."
Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness
these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Deuteronomy 8:4 Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.
Joshua 14:10 "And now behold, the Lord has let me live, just as He spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness; and now behold, I am eighty-five years old today.
Joshua 22:3 "You have not forsaken your brothers

these many days to this [hazeh]day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the Lord your God.
Judges 16:15 [Delilah speaking to Samson] Then she said to him, "How can you say, 'I love you,' when your heart is not with me? You have deceived me these three times and have not told me where your great strength is."
1 Samuel 29:3 Then the commanders of the Philistines said, "What are these Hebrews doing here?" And Achish said to the commanders of the Philistines, "Is this not David, the servant of Saul the king of Israel, who has been with me these [zeh] days, or rather [zeh] these years, and I have found no fault in him from the day he deserted to me to this [hazeh] day?"
2 Samuel 14:2 So Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there and said to her, "Please pretend to be a mourner, and put on mourning garments now, and do not anoint yourself with oil, but be like a woman who has been mourning for the dead many days;
Jeremiah 25:3 "From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this [hazeh] day,
these twenty-three years the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.
Zechariah 1:12 Then the angel of the Lord answered and said, "O Lord of hosts, how long wilt Thou have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which Thou hast been indignant these seventy years?"
Zechariah 7:2-3 Now the town of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men to seek the favor of the Lord, 3 speaking to the priests who belong to the house of the Lord of hosts, and to the prophets saying, "Shall I weep in the fifth month and abstain, as I have done these many years?"
Job 19:3 "These ten times you have insulted me, You are not ashamed to wrong me.
Esther 4:11 "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king
for these thirty days."
Finally, in Zech. 7:5, the conjunction waw is affixed to the zeh.
"Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these [w:zeh] seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted?
Marjorie
Alleymom

Scholar
Response to 577
The concept of 'these seventy years' certainly does convey in English, the idea of present time but it also can convey the bringing back of a past time event into the present. For example, one could say; Remember what you did at the last District Convention!
Neil ---
You do not understand what a demonstrative pronoun is. We are talking about the use of THIS/THAT and THESE/THOSE.
The example you gave does not have a demonstrative pronoun.

If you want to come up with a valid counterexample, you will have to find an example where the word THIS is used in the construction THIS [= Hebrew zeh] + DURATION to refer to a past event.
Any counterexample must have THIS + a number of time units.
Please take a look at the verses I just posted in the previous message.
Zechariah 1:12 says "THESE seventy years" (the Hebrew zeh is the singular form of the demonstrative pronoun, and the word for year is singular. In English, this would literally be "THIS seventy YEAR"; i.e., THIS seventy year period, treating the substantive as a collective noun.
And, once again, you are arguing on the basis of the English.
Marjorie
Alleymom

I'd like to take a closer look at some of the verses which have zeh + number of time units.
In Jeremiah 25:3, note that the formula "FROM date #1 ... TO this day" and the phrase "these [zeh] twenty-three years". are in apposition.
Jeremiah 25:3 explicitly "From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this [hazeh] day, these twenty-three years the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.
The thing to take note of in the three verses from Deuteronomy is that we know the date on Moses' speech. Deut. 1:1 says that Moses speaks these words to the children of Israel on "the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month." Therefore when we see the phrase "these forty years" we know that the reference is not to some forty-year period which took place in the distant past. "These forty years" refers to the immediately preceding forty years.
Deuteronomy 2:7 "For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done; He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing."
Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness
these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Deuteronomy 8:4 Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.
Suppose that thousands of years later a Jewish rabbi is talking to his congregation about the wonders God did for the children of Israel. He would not say "THESE forty years". He would say "THOSE forty years": "Your ancestors' clothing did not wear out, nor did their feet swell THOSE forty years." "The Lord God was with them THOSE forty years." "The Lord God led your ancestors in the wilderness THOSE forty years."
Marjorie
toreador

It sure is nice to have those who love the study of linguistics to be able to participate in a thread like this so we can see both sides of the issue without having to spend years of university study to understand it.
Leolaia

Marjorie...It would be quite striking to compare these with a list of examples of hu' + DURATION, especially if these include clear examples of a long completed duration which is being discursively referenced in the present.
Great work, BTW.
Alleymom

In Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor's An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, 1990, the section on demonstative pronouns includes a reference to anarthrous zeh occurring with numerals in expressions of time. ("Anarthrous" means without the definite article. And "zeh," for those who have missed the earlier posts, is the demonstrative "THIS".)
All of the phrases I highlighted in my examples of zeh + number of time units were instances of anarthrous zeh with a numeral in an expression of time, which is what Waltke is talking about.
On page 311, in section 17.4.2, Waltke says that anarthrous zeh "occurs with numerals in expressions of time and appears to emphasize the time (cf. the English redundancies 'this here' and 'that there'). "
He gives Joshua 14:10 (which is in my list) as an example:
"Now then, YHWH has kept me alive, just as he promised, these forty-five years."
What Waltke is saying is that the zeh emphasizes the time: THESE forty-five years ~ "this here" forty-five year period.
Also of interest is Waltke's discussion of zeh ("this") + yom ("day") with the definite article "ha".
In 17.4.2.b he discusses the phrase "ha-yom ha-zeh". He says (and I am transliterating the Hebrew):
"The phrase [ha-yom ha-zeh] is almost invariably adverbial. It specifies the time when an action occurs (#4) and is thus equivalent to adverbial [ha-yom]."
His example is Joshua 3:7 "Today I will begin to exalt you." [Today = ha-yom ha-zeh.]
He continues: "In dating events, [ha-yom ha-hu' ] is usually used for past and future events, while [ha-yom ha-zeh] ... is reserved for present time; the near deictic can, however, be used to refer to far distant time (#5). His example #5 is Gen. 7:11 "In the six-hundredth year of Noah's life ... on this day ..." [ba-yom ha-zeh].
In plain English, he is saying that the phrase "THAT day," with the definite article and the demonstrative hu' ("that") rather than the demonstative zeh ("this"), is used for past and future events.
Let me decode his reference to the "near deictic". A "deictic" is linguist talk for a pointer word. The demonstratives "this," "that," "these," and "those" have "deictic" force. They point to objects or events which are NEAR or FAR. Waltke says the NEAR deictic "this" CAN be used to refer to far distant time.
His example was Gen. 7:11. "In the six-hundredth year of Noah's life ... on this day ..." [ba-yom ha-zeh]. This differs from our examples of zeh in that the zeh is arthrous (has the definite article) and there is no numeral used to express units of time.
After discussing "today" [ha-yom ha-zeh] and "that day" [ha-yom ha-hu'], both of which have the definite article "ha," he then comes to the phrase we are interested in:
anarthrous zeh (= "THIS" without the definite article) + numeral. I quoted this section at the beginning of this message.
>>> On page 311, in section 17.4.2, Waltke says that anarthrous zeh "occurs with numerals in expressions of time and appears to emphasize the time (cf. the English redundancies 'this here' and 'that there'). " <<<
Once again, the examples I gave in message 457 were instances of anarthrous zeh + number of time units.
Marjorie
AlanF

I'm sitting here laughing my butt off at scholar pretendus. His "explanations" remind me of a poor Down's Syndrome child I spent time with as a young boy. The poor kid drooled on his chin and could barely speak, but he had fun when we gave him a squirt gun and all of us kids ran around squirting everyone in sight. When the kid got squirted in the face, he kind of mumbled "dooonnnn!" and squirted right back, laughing. He had almost no idea what was going on around him, but he had fun doing it.
AlanF
Alleymom

Leolaia --
It would be quite striking to compare these with a list of examples of hu' + DURATION, especially if these include clear examples of a long completed duration which is being discursively referenced in the present.
As in my hypothetical example of the Rabbi talking to his congregation about their ancestors and "THOSE forty years" when their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell?
I'll check Even-Shoshan, which is an absolutely wonderful resource. I'm curious myself.
Actually, I'd also be interested to know if the distant demonstrative occurs in both the singular and the plural with numerals.
Marjorie
Leolaia

Alleymom....About your second to the last post, I think attention should especially be drawn to the tense/aspect of the clausal verb, e.g. is the verb in the main clause of Joshua 14:10 ("YHWH has kept me alive ... these forty-five years") inflected for imperfect aspect; this is the key evidence whether the action modified by the time adverbial is regarded as still ongoing or not.
His example was Gen. 7:11. "In the six-hundredth year of Noah's life ... on this day ..." [ba-yom ha-zeh]. This differs from our examples of zeh in that the zeh is arthrous (has the definite article) and there is no numeral used to express units of time.
More importantly, it differs by having in the same clause the antedecent for the deictic: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on this day all the springs of the great deep burst forth". As mentioned in your post, we need to distinguish between deictics that refer to a proximal element in discourse (e.g. Genesis 7:11) and deictics that refer outside of the discursive context to a situation in the extralinguistic situation that is proximal (e.g. Joshua 14:10).
Alleymom

Since we've been discussing the Hebrew words zeh and hu', I thought now would be a great time to post the following take-off on Abbott & Costello's famous "Who's on First?" dialogue. ABBOTT & COSTELLO LEARN HEBREW by Rabbi Jack Moline
ABBOTT: I see you're here for your Hebrew lesson.
COSTELLO: I'm ready to learn.
A: Now, the first thing you must understand is that Hebrew and English have many words which sound alike, but they do not mean the same thing.
C: Sure, I understand.
A: Now, don't be too quick to say that.
C: How stupid do you think I am - don't answer that. It's simple - some words in Hebrew sound like words in English, but they don't mean the same.
A: Precisely.
C: We have that word in English, too. What does it mean in Hebrew?
A: No, no. Precisely is an English word.
C: I didn't come here to learn English, I came to learn Hebrew. So make with the Hebrew.
A: Fine. Let's start with mee.
C: You.
A: No, mee.
C: Fine, we'll start with you.
A: No, we'll start with mee.
C: Okay, have it your way.
A: Now, mee is who.
C: You is Abbott.
A: No, no, no. Mee is who.
C: You is Abbott.
A: You don't understand.
C: I don't understand? Did you just say me is who?
A: Yes I did. Mee is who.
C: You is Abbott.
A: No, you misunderstand what I am saying. Tell me about mee.
C: Well, you're a nice enough guy.
A: No, no. Tell me about mee!
C: Who?
A: Precisely.
C: Precisely what?
A: Precisely who.
C: It's precisely whom!
A: No, mee is who.
C: Don't start that again - go on to something else.
A: All right. Hu is he.
C: Who is he?
A: Yes.
C: I don't know. Who is he?
A: Sure you do. You just said it.
C: I just said what?
A: Hu is he.
C: Who is he?
A: Precisely.
C: Again with the precisely! Precisely who?
A: No, precisely he.
C: Precisely he? Who is he?
A: Precisely!
C: And what about me?
A: Who.
C : me, me, me!
A : Who, who, who!
C : What are you, an owl? Me! Who is me?
A : No, hu is he!
C: I don't know, maybe he is me!
A: No, hee is she!
C: (STARE AT ABBOTT) Do his parents know about this?
A: About what?
C: About her!
A: What about her?
C: That she is he!
A: No, you've got it wrong - hee is she!
C:' Then who is he?
A: Precisely!
C: Who?
A: He!
C: Me?
A: Who!
C: He?
A; She!
C: Who is she?
A: No, hu is he.
C: I don't care who is he, I want to know who is she?
A: No, that's not right.
C: How can it not be right? I said it. I was standing here when I said it, and I know me.
A: Who.
C: Who?
A: Precisely!
C: Me! Me is that he you are talking about! He is me!
A: No, hee is she!
C: Wait a Minute, wait a minute! I'm trying to learn a little Hebrew, and now I can't even speak English. Let me review.
A: Go ahead.
C: Now first You want to know me is who.
A: Correct.
C: And then you say who is he.
A: Absolutely.
C: And then you tell me he is she.
A & C: Precisely!
C : Now look at this logically. If me is who, and who is he, and he is she, don't it stand to reason that me is she?
A: Who?
C: She!
A: That is he!
C: Who is he?
A & C: Precisely!
C: I have just about had it. You have me confused I want to go home. You know what I want? Ma!
A: What.
C I said Ma.
A: What.
Q: What are you, deaf? I want Ma!
A: What!
C: Not what, who!
A: He!
C: Not he! Ma is not he!
A: Of course not! Hu is he!
C I don't know. I don't know. I don't care. I don't care who is he, he is she, me is who, ma is what. I just want to go home now and play with my dog.
A: Fish.
C Fish?
A: Dag is fish.
C: That's all, I'm outa here.
============
If you didn't get it, read this and then try it again. Hebrew word pronounced "who" = English word "he" Hebrew word pronounced "mee" = English word "who" Hebrew word pronounced "hee" = English word "she" Hebrew word pronounced "ma" = English word "what" Hebrew word pronounced "dag" = English word "fish"

Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?

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