karl, טוב מראה עינים מהלך־נפשׁ גם־זה הבל ורעות רוח
1. i think you should include with your questions an explanation why you reject the usual interpretations, which remains an enigma for most of us. i personally see nothing wrong with them here, that would require a total grammatical reshuffle of the clause. 2. the formula TOV (noun1) M-(noun2) is the usual comparative in hebrew, especially late BH and talmudic. in my opinion it fits perfectly the available timing evidence for a late qohelet. also note that HLK occurs here as a noun in smixut. 3. also GM-ZH in versicle b indicates reference to a noun, not a verb. but, oddly, it refers to a SINGLE noun, though TWO are mentioned. perhaps this was the background for your rejection in item 1. but this is solved if e.g. you put versicle a in quotation marks! as to versicle a, i suggest two possible readings: "eye evidence (objective) is better than mental cogitation (subjective)" but this would perhaps put it in the 17th century AD! or: "one should prefer the senses to being absorbed with thoughts": this sounds more suitable to an early post-exilic book. but the important element in both is the quotation mark around them. thus, ZH refers not to any of the two nouns, but to versicle a as a unit. nir cohen _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
