21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:9-10, new trop

Genesis 3:9-10

 

ט וַיִּקְרָ֛א יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶל־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ל֖וֹ אַיֶּֽכָּה:

י וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אֶת־קֹֽלְךָ֥ שָׁמַ֖עְתִּי בַּגָּ֑ן וָֽאִירָ֛א כִּֽי־עֵירֹ֥ם אָנֹ֖כִי וָאֵֽחָבֵֽא:

 

Translation:     **** Gd called to the man; He said to him, where are you?

He said: I heard Your voice, in the garden; I was afraid, I am naked, I hid.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

אַיֶּכָּה	Where are you
שָׁמַעְתִּי	I heard
אִירָא	I was afraid
אָנֹכִי	I

 

Anokhi is a separate word for “I” besides ani.

 

Shamati is from a lamed ayin verb.

 

Verse 10 illustrates what I was saying about emphasis. The normal word order in a sentence that has a perfect aspect verb is subject-verb-object. If there’s an adverb, it’s adverb-verb-subject-object. If it’s in oblique modality, it’s verb-subject-object.

 

This verse puts the object of the verb shamati first in the clause. It’s not clear to me why that’s important to the man. Maybe he heard the wind and knew Gd would be moving around, but was only afraid upon hearing the voice which showed that Gd was going to make His presence felt. That would certaintly be supported by the distinctive (segol) version of et.

 

Kind of like when you were a kid and did something wrong. Then you stopped and listened to see if somebody was about to catch you. If not, you started trying to cover up, but when you heard Mom’s or Dad’s voice “Hey, where are you?” you knew you’d better hurry up and finish so you could go stop them from coming any closer to the disaster. If you couldn’t, at least you answered so it wouldn’t seem like you were hiding anything.

 

And like a kid, the man says the one thing that will tell Gd that there’s been a disaster.

 

Lots of languages use topic order sentences for this sort of emphasis. It’s common in Russian and Chinese. We use it less in English but there are examples. I just didn’t use it here.

 

Shama and qol often appear together as shama b’qol. It means “obey”. Here we have et-qolkha shamati which is different.

 

Remember what I said so long ago about ki-tov? So here Adam says ki-eirom. Is he saying “I’m naked” or “I’m shrewd”? Well, he isn’t naked any more, he has a leaf belt on. And ki- means his essence, so he’s saying he’s shrewd. Which means he disobeyed, so he’s hiding out of guilt over his disobedience.

 

Most translations feel justified in sticking with “because I’m naked”, but the trop says differently. The word before ki- is va-ira, and under it is a little left curve with a dot inside the curve. It’s called tvir, it sets that word off from ki-eirom. That’s why I put a comma after “I was afraid”.