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Searching for info on יִֽצְחַק־לִֽי (laugh over me).


David Foster

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I was wondering what the best way to do a  seach for יִֽצְחַק־לִֽי in Hebrew or 'laugh over me' in English? 

 

I came across the phrase this morning while reading Genesis 21:6 and it seemed like a strange expression (laugh over as opposed to laugh with or laugh at). Then when I looked up the Hebrew it's actually 'laugh to me'. 

 

So that lead me to want to look up that expression in the ESV or other texts/tools. When I highlighted the phrase and then right clicked and searched all tools, nothing came up. 

 

Am I doing something wrong or is there nothing written about this phrase?

 

Similarly, when I highlighted the Hebrew phrase and went to research and search all tools it likewise came up with nothing. 

 

Again, am I doing something wrong or is there simply nothing about this hebrew phrase? 

 

Thanks kindly! 

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I don't know what you own, but I got "only" 5 hits.

 

Best is in Anchor Yale Bible Dict. and NIDNTT (the translation from the German "Theologisches Begriffslexikon zum Neuen Testament"). 

 

The other are: John Piper sermon, Christian Quotations, Preaching the Word Commentary.

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 The derisive “laugh at” is ruled out by the tenor of vs. 7; note also the unique construction of the verb ṣḥq with lı̄.
E.A. Speiser, Genesis, The Anchor Yale Bible; (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 155.
accord://read/Anchor_Gen-Deut#1495
6.      The laughter is now joyous, in contrast to the earlier laugh of skepticism recorded in 17:17 and 18:12ff.
Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, The JPS Torah Commentary; Accordance electronic ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 146.
accord://read/JPS_Torah_Commentary#1980
11 sn Sarah’s words play on the name “Isaac” in a final triumphant manner. God prepared “laughter” (צְחֹק, ysékhoq) for her, and everyone who hears about this “will laugh” (יִצְחַק, yitskhaq) with her. The laughter now signals great joy and fulfillment, not unbelief (cf. Gen 18:12–15).
W. Hall Harris, ed., The NET Bible Notes, 1st, Accordance electronic ed. (Richardson: Biblical Studies Press, 2005), paragraph 2073.
accord://read/NET_Notes#2073

Twice here Sarah uses the root צחק “laugh” found in Isaac’s name. Indeed, the second line involves the exact form of his name: “everyone who hears it will Isaac for me.” Thus the play on his name is most obvious here, even though it is not drawn attention to in the narrative. Earlier, the name Isaac had been associated with the laughter of incredulity (17:17–19; 18:12–15); here, though, it is the laughter of joy (cf Pss 113:9; 126:2).
 “Everyone who hears it will laugh for me.” Westermann’s suggestion (following Budde, Gunkel, Skinner) to transpose this line to the end of v 7 breaks up the poetic couplet and is unnecessary. Some commentators (eg, Gunkel, Gispen) translate the second line “everyone . . . will laugh at me.” In other words, those who hear the story will laugh at such an old woman bearing a child or laugh that she doubted the divine promise. Though possible, such an interpretation jars; the context is suffused with an atmosphere of joy and wonder at God’s mighty acts. With most commentators, I prefer to see Sarah drawing attention to the universal pleasure her belated motherhood brings.
Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, WBC 2; Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 80-81.
accord://read/WBC-OT-36#4755
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We don't have it in Accordance (yet!), but I love "The Grammar of God" by Aviya Kushner. Her chapter on "Laughter" is a good example of what you'll find in the rest of the book:

 

 

 

One of my biggest fears is that I will die because I have talked too much. In my yeshiva day school, I was taught that every human being has a limited number of words, and then that’s it— you’re gone. Every few months I start worrying about my tally, and I try to talk less. I warn my friends that a new, quieter life lies ahead, but they don’t believe me. Within days, my resolve fades and I’m chattering again, letting the words pile up dangerously. Despite the fact that everyone in my family is familiar with the threat of the constant ticking of words, most of my relatives are cheerful, death-defying blabbermouths. 

 

And yet, among the blabbermouths, there is my sister, who utters a normal amount of words. Maybe that’s why she gets so much done. Once, in the middle of dinner, my parents complimented her on her magnificent, chatterless efficiency. She had, as usual, brought order to a huge array of bowls of soup to be salted and spiced, mounds of food to be taken out of ovens and placed on platters and matched with serving spoons— without talking about it. But she had an unusual reaction to the compliment. “Emor me’at ve’aseh harbeh,” she said. “Say little and do much.” And then, very softly, she added: “It’s the first thing you learn in school, from Avraham Avinu.” 

 

My sister was crediting Abraham, or, as she called him, Abraham our Father, for the way she goes about her work. The rest of us kept eating, stunned, for once, into silence. In the quiet, I thought again about how much our early life, how the way we read and heard the Bible, has affected all of my siblings. And so my sister, a management consultant and entrepreneur, sitting in front of me in perfectly ironed business clothes, cutting her food into pieces that were all exactly the same size— that sister noticed how Abraham rushed to get butter and milk, rushed to delegate, and coordinated all the tasks to welcome the visiting messengers who came to tell him he and Sarah would soon have a child. My sister noticed how swift he was, and how few words he needed to manage the entire experience. Slow and inefficient as I am, I never noticed how Abraham ran, how he did not make time to chat. In my universe of constant chatter, that grand, ancient, patriarchal quiet was impossible to hear. 

 

I did notice something else about the story in Hebrew: how Sarah laughed. It is not a standard laugh. Va’titzchak Sarah be’kirba. Literally, it means “and Sarah laughed deep inside of herself.” Or maybe more accurately: “And Sarah laughed in her gut.” Many translations, like the 1989 New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, try to make that neater, and so they say simply, “Sarah laughed to herself.” But it’s messier than that; it’s an unusual laugh, and I wish that would come through more clearly in translation. Interestingly, some older translations like the King James and the Geneva Bible seem to emphasize the intense inner nature of this laugh more than newer translations do— they both choose “within herself” instead of the tamer “to herself.” 

 

How Sarah laughed reminds me of an earlier scene in the Garden of Eden, which was the last time in Genesis that what a woman heard and how she reacted to something a little difficult to process were at center stage. Some of the Bible’s most resonant moments are depicted by gesture instead of speech. God sees; Eve eats the apple; Lot’s wife turns back; and Sarah memorably laughs. “One thing is clear,” my father says when the subject of Sarah comes up. “It was silent laughter, enabling Sarah later to deny that she laughed.” 

 

I am not certain that the laughter is clear. Perhaps understanding Sarah’s laughter involves understanding the verses that frame it. Her laughter comes after several chapters of challenging circumstances— from relocation to a foreign place, where Abraham introduces her as his sister, to years of barrenness, to strife with her maid, who is also her husband’s concubine. It comes after several verses that elaborately describe how old she is. They are verses full of speech, packed with detail. All of this has not gone unnoticed by the biblical commentators who have scrutinized Sarah for thousands of years. In the rabbis’ hands, the discussion of the intriguing triangle of Abraham, Sarah, and God becomes a conversation on how to behave. 

 

* * * 

 

Now, looking back at the Bible, trying to understand how my sister and I could hear Abraham and Sarah so differently, I realize that the English doesn’t emphasize Abraham’s rushing about as much as the Hebrew does. In Hebrew, he’s rushing in every sentence. In Genesis 18:6 and 18:7, the word “rush” appears twice and the word “run” appears once, all in a two-sentence span of Hebrew, whereas some English translations refer to running or rushing only twice. Here is a literal translation of those two verses, focusing on the meaning of the basic words and not the intricate grammatical issues that are present here as well: 

 

And Abraham rushed to the tent, to Sarah, and said, “Rush! 

Three measurements of the highest-quality flour. Knead it and make cakes.” 

And Abraham ran to the cattle, and he took a young, good calf and gave it to the servant, and the servant prepared it. 

 

In the Yom Kippur prayers, there is a mention of how some people run with their legs to do evil. Abraham, of course, is the opposite: he runs and runs for good. After all this running, after Abraham extends his exemplary hospitality, the Bible does something very interesting. It starts repeating what we already know about Abraham and Sarah. This is especially strange because the passage has just showcased Abraham— as my sister pointed out— as doing a lot and not talking so much. Yet in the very same segment of text, the Bible feels the need to overtalk, to overtell, to say things a few times. It blabbers, like a person with no regard for a word count ticking away. 

 

The blabbering starts with the basics— with the ages of Abraham and Sarah. We already know that Abraham is ninety-nine years old. But then in Genesis 18:11, the Bible tells us, in a very inefficient moment, that Abraham and Sarah are … old. It’s true that ages in the Bible aren’t the same as ages right now— Metushelach lived 969 years, after all— and maybe the Bible simply wants to emphasize their advanced ages. 

 

But after telling us for the second time that Abraham and Sarah are old, the Bible adds, in literal Hebrew, that “a lot of days came” to Abraham and Sarah. The phrasing is an idiom, an ancient expression, that just means they are old. This is a classic example of what happens to biblical Hebrew idioms in translation. When faced with the oddness of a lot of days showing up, the English translations usually simplify and flatten: “days came” becomes the more reasonable-sounding “advanced in years.” But while this translation is accurate, the literal Hebrew is lovely: a lot of days came. Just as one day after another turned my little sister into a young woman and a model of efficiency, so many days, coming one after another, made Sarah and Abraham old. The idea of days coming hints at the surprise of aging— in this case, the first description of old age in the Bible. Suddenly, one day after another: it happens. We focus on the day in front of us, the guest at the doorway, the meal to be made, and don’t think that a lot of days, or a year, or a decade— or several decades— are now behind us. It’s more reassuring to think of human life as days coming, and yet it’s also a haunting way of explaining the quotidian nature of human aging, the inevitability of it. 

 

But verse 11 does not stop there. After telling us that Abraham and Sarah are old, and that a lot of days came to them, in its third attempt at describing what aging is, the Bible tells us that Sarah no longer has orach kanashim. Literally, the phrase means “the way of women.” In Hebrew and in English, the Bible is coy. Whereas the Jewish Publication Society translation spells it out—“ Sarah had stopped having the periods of women”— the English is often translated as “the manner of women” or, in a literal translation, “the way of women.” We readers are expected to know what the way of women is, just as we are supposed to understand, when the Bible says “and he knew his wife,” that knowledge and sex are synonyms. And this is yet another way of simply saying that Sarah is old. 

 

Here is Genesis 18:11, in the 1985 Jewish Publication Society translation: 

 

Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; 

Sarah had stopped having the periods of women. 

 

Then the drama of the passage begins. Abraham presents the messengers with a feast, and he stands nearby as they eat under a tree. Meanwhile, Sarah is behind Abraham, in the tent, listening at the door. I loved that detail as a child when I first read this, and I still do. How like a writer Sarah is, always listening! 

 

The great commentator Rashi understands Sarah’s behavior differently. He does not view it as eavesdropping, or as an expression of curiosity. Instead, Rashi explains that Sarah remained in the tent when the angels came because she was modest. The word Rashi uses to describe her— tenuah— is the same word used in one of the most haunting of the Torah’s commands: Walk modestly before Adonai your God. The Talmud, which is both a legal text and an extensive discussion of the law and the Bible, discusses Sarah’s presence in the tent, too, and it focuses on why the messengers asked where Sarah was. Surely the angels knew she was in the tent. Finally, Rav Yehuda concludes that the angels posed the question in order to endear Sarah to her husband, to remind him of her modesty. 

 

From her hidden perch, Sarah hears the angel say she’ll have a child within a year. In the English, the Oxford Annotated Bible primly says: “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ ” 

 

The rabbis are extremely interested in two questions the verse raises: How, exactly, did Sarah laugh, and why did she laugh at all? Both of these questions are motivated by individual words in Hebrew that are more challenging than they appear in translation. The two problematic words are the Hebrew be’kirba, often translated as “to herself,” and the word edna, which is translated here as “pleasure.” 

 

The commentators tackle this situation word by word. Rashi reads in the word edna, meaning “pleasure” or “delight,” the word idan— or “time,” which he interprets as a period of blood. Interestingly, the modern Hebrew dictionary Even-Shoshan translates edna itself as “menstruation.” What Abraham cannot give Sarah is not pleasure here but time— that is, her time, her menstrual blood. Abraham can’t give her the years back. When Sarah laughs, the reader understands that it is humorous to imagine that Abraham, a mere man, can turn back time. Ibn Janach, the eleventh-century grammarian and lexicographer, defines the three-letter root in edna as ayin, daled, nun. That root, he says, conveys pleasantness and delight. He offers several examples of how the root appears in the Bible. When he arrives at the Sarah episode, he sees edna as “youth.” The ninety-nine-year-old Abraham can’t give Sarah youth... (Keeping to the 2,000-word limit for quotes. If you'd like the rest of the chapter, just let me know. I'll send it on).

 

Kushner, Aviya (2015-09-08). The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible. Random House Publishing Group.

Edited by Mark Allison
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Thanks Fabian, and Mark, I'll have to read this over once I finish work! 

 

However, regarding my search, was it done correctly? 

 

Regarding a Hebrew verb + particle (laugh over), how can I learn more about that specific combination and it's specific meaning (because the dictionaries only seem to list the verb, not the verb + particle)? 

Thanks again for such detailed answers! 

 

PS- Does laugh over seem strange to anyone else?!

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You were performing the search correctly, but by looking for the Hebrew words themselves, you may be missing comments where the words are transliterated. A Research search for the verse, =Gen. 21.6, will give you more hits (btw, the "=" tells Accordance that you are searching for the exact verse, and not a range, i.e. "Gen. 21:6" without the "=" fill find occurrences of Gen. 21, Gen. 1-21, etc.). You may also want to use the Info Pane.

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Check the research dictionaries such as HALOT, BDB, or DCH. These do address the specific combination צחק + ל (of which Gen 21:6 is the only example). The other relevant examples are with the root שׂחק (Hab 1:10; Ps 37:13, 59:9; Jb 5:22, 39:7.18.22, 41:21; Pr 31:25). 

 

Peter

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We don't have it in Accordance (yet!), but I love "The Grammar of God" by Aviya Kushner. Her chapter on "Laughter" is a good example of what you'll find in the rest of the book:

 

 

(Keeping to the 2,000-word limit for quotes. If you'd like the rest of the chapter, just let me know. I'll send it on).

 

Kushner, Aviya (2015-09-08). The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible. Random House Publishing Group.

 

 

Thanks for the offer Mark but I've simply decided to buy the book! Thanks so much for introducing me to such an amazing author! 

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