Notes oil the Aramaic Part of Daniel. 255 



of meanings : " unless, except, but, only, however " ; the word which 

 occurs, for example, in Dan. 2 : 11, 30. 6 : 6, 8, Ezr. 5 : 12, and very 

 frequently elsewhere. There are a few passages in which the hypothesis 

 of this compound has seemed to serve with difficulty, if at all. The 

 most important of these is line 10 of the Aramaic inscription from 

 Teima (CIS. ii, 113 ; Lidzbarski, Nordsem. Epigraphik, p. 447 ; 

 Cooke, North Sem. Inscriptions, p. 195). The first part of the in- 

 scription tells how Salmsezeb, the priest, honored the gods of Teima. 

 The text then proceeds : " Therefore \'\T\h) the gods of Teima made a 

 grant to Salmsezeb and to his seed," etc. A similar meaning of the 

 same word, vocalized Xrh, seems to be called for in Ruth 1 : 13 (twice), 

 this time in a Hebrew text : " Even if I should bear sons, could ye 

 therefore wait till they were grown r could }-e therefore refrain from 

 having husbands : " The rendering might be weakened to "■ then " 

 (German " also "), but it is at least plain that no use of the Hebrew 

 kS DK would do here. And finally, there are three passages in Daniel, 

 namely 2:6, 9, and 4 : 24, in which '^ Qx in any of its recognized 

 meanings would be out of place, and the natural translation of V^ is 

 " therefore." 



Those who understand the word thus have explained its origin in 

 various ways. Gesenius-Buhl, Handworterbuch^"' : " Zusammengesetzt 

 aus ^ und rn " (highly useful information I). Stade, Grammatik, p. 210, 

 regarded it as compounded of the preposition and the suffix pronoun 

 of the fem. third plural. Lidzbarski, Nordsem. Epigr., s. v. THj supposes 

 the second part of the compound to be the inteijection " behold." 

 Similarly Marti, Grammatik, § 96'^: " eine Verstarkung von m in der 

 urspriinglichen Bedeutung von siehe."" Cooke, North Sem. Inscriptions, 

 p. 197, has: " TH if -\- h, then, therefore,'' but omits to explain how 

 this remarkable development of meaning could have taken place. 

 Kautzsch, Grammatik, Brown-Driver-Briggs, Lexicon, Bevan, Comm., 

 and most others, venture no explanation. 



Marti quite overlooks the fact that his theor}' of the word fails to 

 account for its vocalization. " Eine Verstarkung von 1X\ " could not 

 possibly produce in Aramaic !) jnS? but only Vrh- Nor is the com- 

 bination of the preposition with the interjection at all probable on general 

 grounds. I believe that the vowel-pointing in the Biblical passages 

 represents the actual pronunciation ; that the word yro '' therefore " in 

 Hebrew is a borrowing from the Aramaic, and not vice versa; and 

 that the word in all cases, whether meaning " except " or '' therefore," 

 originated in the same combination of the negative '^ and the con- 

 ditional particle ir\. That is, I believe that the use of this compound 



