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      2. RASHI METHOD: WORD MEANING
      BRIEF EXPLANATION: The meaning of words can be explained either by
      • (2a) translating an idiom, a group of words whose collective meaning transcends the meaning of its individual component words,
      • (2b) explaining the nuances and commonality of synonyms-homographs,
      • (2c) describing the usages of connective words like also,because,if-then, when,
      • (2d) indicating how grammatical conjugation can change word meaning
      • (2e) changing word meaning using the figures of speech common to all languages such as irony and oxymorons.
      This examples applies to Rashis Nu22-24a
      URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rule1223.htm
      Brief Summary: The Hebrew Shin-Ayin-Lamed, Shual, means a WALK: a) A forest trail,walk, b) a fox (which travels by trails/walks), c) the leg from toe to top.

When Rashi uses, what we may losely call, the hononym method, Rashi does not explain new meaning but rather shows an underlying unity in disparate meanings. Rashi will frequently do this by showing an underlying unity in the varied meanings of a Biblical root.

In my article Peshat and Derash found on the world wide web at http://www.Rashiyomi.com/rashi.pdf. I advocate enriching the Rashi explanation using a technique of parallel nifty translations in modern English. Today's examples show this.

    The Heberw Biblical root Shin-Ayin-Lamed has a fundamental meaning of a walk or trail. Hence this Biblical root can mean
  • a walk or trail, such as a forest or vineyard trail
  • a fox, [ an animal who is known for his stealth and crawls on trails ]
  • the leg from toe to top [ the organ you walk with. ]

    Applying the above translation to Nu22-24a discussing the appearance of the Angel to Bilam we obtain Then the angel of God stood in a vineyard trail, a fence being on this side, and a fence on that side. In providing this English translation notice that we have used the English idiom trail which mirrors the Hebrew walk since a trail and a walk are semantically close.

Advanced Rashi: The following comments give insights into the whole drama of Biblical interpretation. There is only one verse in the entire Bible where the Hebrew Shin-Ayin-Lamed means what I have translated foot. The verse, Is40-12 states Who has measured sea [depths] with his foot or fixed the horizon with his fist... Because this verse talks about measurement some have interpreted Shin-Ayin-Lamed to refer to a cupped hand. So the verse would read Who has measured waters with his cupped hand.... These same people see a cupped hand as a hollow and then they interpret the verse in Numbers as The angel stood in a hollow between vineyards with a fence on each side. These people would then name a fox by the hollows foxes hide in.

There is no way to settle this contrversy between the hollow translation and the foot-walk translation. The reason there is no way to settle this is that there are so few Biblical verses with these terms. Appealing to other languages also does not help as these terms are rare in other languages. I brought this controversy to show the flavor of Biblcial interpretation. It is a dynamic and exciting field, begging for creativity, with researchers basing inference on extremely little evidence.

I also brought this example to show the why of this email newsletter. Both translations use the same fundamental meaning-hononym method. In other words the methods presented in this newsletters are universal rules of interpretation which all agree to.


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