21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:22, about that evidence

Genesis 2:22

 

כב וַיִּ֩בֶן֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֧ים ׀ אֶת־הַצֵּלָ֛ע אֲשֶׁר־לָקַ֥ח מִן־הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְאִשָּׁ֑ה וַיְבִאֶ֖הָ אֶל־הָֽאָדָֽם:

 

Translation:     **** Gd must have built the rib that He took from the man into a woman; for He brought her to the man.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

וַיִּבֶן	He must have built
צֵּלָע	Rib
לָקַח	He took
אִשָּׁה	woman

 

Here you see the perfect aspect of laqach, that verb I had to eat my words on in a previous lesson.

 

Va-y’vieha “He brought her,” is an example of a verb with an object suffix. Notice that it is the hifil of “to come” which I just gave you.

 

This verse starts with an evidentiary epistemic, a shortened lamed heh verb with vav as a prefix. The key to this morphology is that whatever evidence you get, that’s enough. It’s also true that the audience knows that men and women go together now; that cultural feature started back in Gan Eden.

 

Notice the segol version of et. This is the distinctive, not the collective version. In lesson 86 on Genesis 2:7, it uses the distinctive et, too; the man was made of dust from the earth. The woman was made of a rib taken from the man.

Also notice that Gd formed (va-yitser) the man and He built (yiven) the woman. What’s more, we have a certainty epistemic here. When He brought the woman to the man, she was evidence of what happened to the rib. Midrash Rabbah Breshit 80:5 says that the issue is that Gd built the woman, He didn’t create her using bara. Since he didn’t create her from nothing, bara is not appropriate.

There’s also an aggada on Talmud Sanhedrin 39a: If thieves took silver from you, and left gold in its place, are you going to go to the authorities about that?

Where’s the zaqef?