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The Book of the Tetragrammaton
of Aben Ezra
ספר
השם לאבן עזרא
(Communicated by the Rev. H.
Hochheimer, of Baltimore)
One of the most important, and,
at the same time, least known of the works of
Abraham Aben Ezra is his
ספר השם, or his book concerning the
quadrilateral name of God, which remained in
manuscript until very recently, and was left quite
unnoticed, and so to say, buried in the dust of the
Bavarian state library at Munich. It was only in the
year 1834 (5594) that this precious little work
attracted the attention of Dr. Lippmann, the
well-known Jewish scholar, who made a copy of it,
and had it printed after supplying it with a
commentary.
<<567>>
The work itself, though it embraces but few sheets,
still contains a real treasure of grammatical,
philosophical, and more particularly mathematical
investigations concerning the quadrilateral name of
God, and gives us the means, moreover, of
elucidating more fully many obscure passages of Aben
Ezra’s Commentary on the Bible. It requires,
therefore, no excuse, if we present the readers of
the Occident with a brief epitome of this work,
which is nearly totally unknown among us. It
contains eight chapters.—We will now commence our
extracts in order.
Chapter I.
Every proper name
שם העצם designates
the particular being to which it is applied from the
remainder of its whole species, in order to
predicate of it certain properties or actions. Since
now the proper name of the being to which it refers,
so to say, places it before us, the Hebrews denote
the work name with
שם Shaym,
evidently derived from the root
שם, Shahm,
there. (See Job. Xxiii. 7,
שם ישר נוכח עמו.)
From this same root they have
derived שמים,
Shamahayim “heaven,” comprehending thereby the
two ends of the world’s axis, around which the whole
globe of the heaven apparently revolves. These two
poles are eternally immutable and immovable. It is
now on account of this immobility, the constant
standing still in one spot, that the poles,
and taking the part for the whole heaven, are called
שמים, as it were an
everlasting there. As proof we may cite Ps.
cxv. 16: השמים שמים לה׳,
“the heavens are the heavens of the Lord,” where the
second is equivalent to “place,” as though it were
השמים מקום ה׳ “the
heavens are the place of the Lord.”
This view will also justify the
dual form (רבים הזוני)
applied to heaven, which in Hebrew is always
employed to denote objects which exist in pairs, as
רגלים feet,
אזנים ears,
עינים eyes, &c.,
the same may be said of
זהרים Zaharahyim
“noon” or “midday,” which is used in the dual form,
because noon is the moment in which the centre of
the sun enters the meridian, whereby the arc which
the sun describes in its diurnal course is
intersected in its point of culmination by the
meridian, and divided into two equal parts.—From
the root שם is also
derived שממה שמה
a desert, desolation, because in a
desolate, waste place there is nothing left beyond
the mere there; i.e., an empty space. Now,
although these latter words are derived from a root
with a double second radical
כפולים or, as some
designate the same a ע״ע,
whereas שם has the
appearance of a verb ע״ו,
the second radical a qui<<568>escent
ו, they have
nevertheless the same relative signification as
שדד and
שוד, or
רמם and
רום [and several
other verbs found in various forms, in which two
radicals are the same.] Another proof that
שם
there is derived from a double second
radical root פעלי הכפל
verba duplicata, can be found in the
fact that when ה is
added thereto the מ
receives dahgesh forte, which evidently
supplies the defective מ
thus שמה for
שממה
thither.
Chapter II.
The noun proper
שם העצם is is
distinguished in four ways from the noun common
שם התאר.
1. The noun common is derived
from a verb; e. g., חכם
the wise man for
חכם
to be wise; which is not the case with
proper nouns; for if even some such names are
derived from other words as
יצחק from
צחק (Gen. xxi. 6)
and יעקב from
עקב (Ib. xxv. 26),
it is not allowable to derive verbs from such nouns;
you can therefore not make therefrom a past tense as
יצחקתי “I was an
Isaac,” nor a future אצחק
“I will be an Isaac,” so you can form
חכם the past tense
חכמתי “I was wise,”
&c.; for the formative Yod has become a
radical, and cannot be dropped therefor. As a proof
we refer to (Esther viii. 17)
מתיהדים which does
not mean to say that they became Jews, but that they
for the moment professed to belong to the Jews;
[like התחלה “he
feigned himself sick.”]
2. The nouns common can be used
in the plural; for instance, from
חכם we can make
חכמים “wise man;”
but not so with nouns proper, since it is
inadmissible to say יצחקים
“Isaacs,” &c. The forms in plural
ישראלים
“Israelites” ישמעאלים
“Ishmaelites,” do not mean persons called
ישראל “Israel,” or
ישמעאל “Ishmael,”
but they express names of families, of course
composed of many who are called
ישראלי “Israelite,”
&c. The proper spelling of the plural should
therefore be with two Yods
ישראליים, but the form Yisraeliyim was
abridged for euphony’s sake to Yisraelim.
3. Every common noun can be
designated by an article, not so a proper one. For
the article serves to mark the word particularly;
but if I employ the proper name which designates the
object particularly in itself, no farther and closer
definition can be admissible. The apparent exception
המנשה in Deut. iii.
13, can be justified on the ground that the final
ה stands for Yod;
since the quiescents אהוי
are as well-known often interchanged; the word in
question is therefore a generic name instead of
המנשי “derived from
Menasseh.” Or it is possible that the
<<569>>generic
Yod has been omitted, as in
הימנה of Numb.
xxvi. 44.—The article in the word
היצהר of Zechariah
iv. 14, is regular because it is not referring to
the noun proper Yizhar, but signifies olive oil,
a noun common, which of course admits the article.
4. The noun common can be put
in the construct state, or united to suffixes as
חכם לב Exod. xxxi.
6, “the wise of heart,”
מלכי (Psalm ii. 6), “my king;” which is not
admissible with proper nouns. Wherefore the author
of the book היצחקי
has trespassed against the rules of grammar, in so
calling his book, probably after his own name. Names
of places, however, form an exception to these last
two rules, since they can be put in the construct
state, and receive the article; as in
מבית לחם יהודה
(Ruth i. 1), “From Beth-Lehem of Judah;”
בקרקר for
בהקרקר (Judg. viii.
10), “in the Karkar,” [may it not be
elliptical “in the place
מקום called Karkar?”]
After these prefatory remarks
the author proceeds with the proper object of his
work.
In Holy Writ we find three
designations of the Most High Being as proper nouns: אהיה
יהו׳ יה of which the second the holiest
of them all is not to be uttered everywhere and by
every one. We pronounce it
אדני Adonay,
which is in form of a pluralis excellentiae, similar
to אלהים and must
therefore not be confounded with
אדני with suffix
singular proper to the noun
אדון Lord. If it
stands with אדני
however, it rece4ives the vowels of Elohim,
and is so pronounced.
The other names of God which
are read with the vowels with which they are written
are common or rather adjective nouns; e. g.
אלהים God,
אדון Lord,
שדי Almighty;
wherefore they can take the plural form, though only
a pl. majestaticus;—construct state;—definite
article and suffices, as the case may be; e. g.
אלהי ישראל (Gen.
xxiii. 20) “the God of Israel;”
האלהים הגדול
(Nehemiah viii. 8) “the great God.” And since the
holy name יהו׳ is
also found, as in 1 Sam. i. 11, in connexion with
צבאות, it is
maintained by some that the word
צבאות Zebaoth is
also a proper noun; and the combination of the words
would then be similar to the phrase in Isaiah xii.
2, עזי וזמרת יה ה׳.—But
it seems more correct to regard the quadrilateral
name sometimes as a proper, at others as a common or
adjective4 noun; and we could then render
ה׳ צבאות “The Lord
who dwells in the midst of the heavenly armies.”
(See 1 Kings xxii. 19.) So also we read in Exod.
xxiii. 21 כי שמי בקרבו
“for my name is in the midst of him.” In order to
prove that proper nounds are occasionally used as
adjectives, we may cite the word
משה usually meaning
Moses; we read in Isaiah lxiii. 11
ויזכר ימי עולם משה עמו
which should <<570>>be translated: “And it
remembered the ancient days, of the drawing forth of
his people,” משה
being here the active participle of the verb
Mashoh, “to draw forth.” That this construction
is correct appears from the4 succeeding verse, which
says איה המעלם מים
“Where is he who led them up from the sea?”
In the phrase
אלהים צבאות where
the first noun is irregularly in the absolute
state, we must supply an elliptical construct case,
and consider it equal to
אלהים אלהי צבאות “the God, who is the God
of the armies.” So also we find in 2 Chron. xv. 18
והנבואה עדד הנביא
equal to והנבואה נבואת
“the prophecy which was the prophecy of Oded
the Prophet; so likewise Josh. iii. 14
הארון הברית instead
of הארון ארון “The
ark which was the ark of the covenant;” and
in Gen. xxiv. 67 האהלה שרה
אמו for האהלה אהל
“to the tent which was the tent of Sarah his
mother;” and many other similar phrases.
(To be continued.) |
