Can Accordance help here?

[KevinSoars]

On looking at Is 6:9, I was curious about the word ‏מְלֹא The Instant Details Window gives me the following: ...... Noun comm masc sing constr fullness Now my question is, "Can Accordance help me, and if so how, to discover why, in the original, does the Hebrew use a 'Noun comm masc sing constr' as opposed to a verb or an adjective? Would this be a 'normal' way of expressing this (and therefore Accordance would be able to help me to see how and why) or is it simply a matter of style with no 'real' explanation?

 

I would be most grateful if anyone would have the time to help! Thanks in anticipation.

 

Kevin.

[Robb B]

Are you sure you were looking at Isa 6:9? I don't see that word in that verse.

[KevinSoars]

Sorry about that! Thanks, Rob for pointing it out and so quickly. I should have written Is. 6:3. By the way, I do realise that I am probably asking too much of Accordance here and it is probably a question that I should put to a teacher of Biblical Hebrew if I had one!

 

Kevin.

[Robb B]

Kevin,

 

I think what's going on here is the noun "full" is an accusative of situation, specifying an attribute of the earth, namely, that the earth is in the situation of being full of God's glory. An accusative of situation generally provides information about an attribute of what it is modifying, so this is an attribute of the whole earth. I hope that makes some sense.

[Robb B]

By the way, these kinds of syntactical questions are difficult to answer apart from an intermediate Hebrew grammar because they are somewhat technical. If you have Waltke's grammar in Accordance, that could be of some help. When the OT syntactical database is completed, you'll be able to do some syntactical searches that will help you see more of these types of clauses in the Hebrew text, but without a grammar to help explain the construction, it might still be difficult to determine the exact function of the syntactical patterns.

[A. Smith]

By the way, these kinds of syntactical questions are difficult to answer apart from an intermediate Hebrew grammar because they are somewhat technical. If you have Waltke's grammar in Accordance, that could be of some help. When the OT syntactical database is completed, you'll be able to do some syntactical searches that will help you see more of these types of clauses in the Hebrew text, but without a grammar to help explain the construction, it might still be difficult to determine the exact function of the syntactical patterns.

 

This is very true. More directly, I think it is safe to say that Accordance language texts are not designed to answer 'why' question, only 'what' questions. That is, Accordance can generate the data from which the research to answer a 'why' question such as yours may begin. The grammars and whatnot are really the end result of scholars researching the text and analyzing the results. Other Accordance modules (dictionaries, commentaries, grammars, etc) can provide the answers you seek. But there is no search you can do which will provide the answer to why one word is used over another word. Searches provide data (what); analysis provides answers (why). If you have the knowledge to do such analyssi yourself, have at it. If you don't, talk to the experts (via their books!)

[Robert Holmstedt]

On looking at Is 6:9, I was curious about the word ‏מְלֹא The Instant Details Window gives me the following: ...... Noun comm masc sing constr fullness Now my question is, "Can Accordance help me, and if so how, to discover why, in the original, does the Hebrew use a 'Noun comm masc sing constr' as opposed to a verb or an adjective? Would this be a 'normal' way of expressing this (and therefore Accordance would be able to help me to see how and why) or is it simply a matter of style with no 'real' explanation?

 

I would be most grateful if anyone would have the time to help! Thanks in anticipation.

 

Kevin.

 

Kevin,

 

There are many ways to begin to answer your question and the best approach, of course, depends on how much Hebrew you've had. Since I don't know that, I'll shoot from the hip and hopefully hit something solid.

 

1. The first place might be to look at the syntactic discussion of "construct" in one of the reference grammars available in Accordance: Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley ("GKC Hebrew") §128, Waltke and O'Connor §9 (the chapter called "Genitive"), or Joüon-Muraoka §129 ("Genitive and the construct state"). In each case, you'll find some discussion of the construct state used to describe an attribute (1st noun) of the noun hosting the construct (2nd noun). There is a particularly nice chart in Waltke-O'Connor §9.5.3k. Thus, מלא כל הארץ 'fulness of all the earth' indicates that 'all the earth' has the attribute of 'fulness'. Well, that's about as clear as mud, eh?

 

2. The second place (or, perhaps the first) is to check on the entry in one of the lexica in Accordance: BDB, CDCH, or HALOT. All three give the following entry for the noun מלא, 'that which fills or makes full.' That helps a bit, since it suggests that this noun, from the root מלא, captures an event or process. Thus, as an attribute of כל הארץ ,כל הארץ is being מלא by something.

 

3. The fact that מלא is a noun and that כל הארץ is bound to it (i.e., the construct state phrase), leaves one searching for another element to make a clause. In this case, it must be כבודו 'his glory'. Since there is no apparent verb here, one can then go to the three grammars in Accordance and read about the "verbless clause" (GKC §141, "The Noun Clause"; WOC §8, "Nominative Function and Verbless Clauses"; or JM §154 "Nominal Clause"). The result is that one can only analyze the relationship between כבודו and מלא as subject and predicate, either "his glory (subject) [is] fulness" or "fulness [is] his glory." Common sense suggests the former, with "his glory" as the subject.

 

4. Putting it all together is up to the user; Accordance only provides the tools. Thus, the result is "his glory [is] that which produces the fulness of the all the earth".

 

5. Now, your question about why the author did not use an adjective or a verb is insightful. An adjective wouldn't fit so well here, because an adjective מָלֵא would suggest that "all the earth is full" and to express what was making it full would require a prepositional phrase not a verbless clause. A verb might fit well (indeed, many English translations opt for the verbal rendering, including the great commentary set available in Accordance, Keil and Delitzsch, "filling the whole earth is his glory"). But using a verb makes a different overall statement; it suggests that God's glory is actively engaged in "doing something". The verbless clause, in contrast, expresses the idea that the event of producing fulness is a quality of God's glory, which is a different statement altogether.

 

6. I could also note that the Word Biblical Commentary on Isaiah (available in Accordance) has a nice note on the way that various ancient versions understand מלא in Isa 6.3.

 

I hope that helps to see how Accordance can help you understand what is at once a basic and complicated question about why מלא the noun was used in Isa 6.3.

[KevinSoars]

Thank you very much indeed Robb and Robert for kindly responding to my request (as to the 'why' as opposed to the 'what' of A. Smith for which I am also grateful) and for the very informative answers you gave me. This was my first such request on the Forums and the kind response of others who are much better informed will give me the courage to ask again.If I may add here, I really am impressed by the kind and 'humbly gentle' response that is given by so many more knowledgeable in the 'Accordance community' to those of us who are not quite so!

 

Kevin.