[Avodah] What does hamelech hakadosh mean?

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2008 at 10:54:29AM -0600, Jay F Shachter wrote:
: "Marty Bluke" <marty.bluke at gmail.com> wrote on Thu, 2 Oct 2008 10:53:49 +0300:
: > Rashi on the gemara comments that hamelech hamishpat is
: > grammatically incorrect, it should be melech hamishpat and it is to
: > be understood that way (the king of mishpat) and basically we ignore
: > the extra heh.  The Beis Yosef comments that the same problem should
: > apply to hamelech hakadosh and yet Rashi doesn't say anything.

: That the Beyth Yosef would say such a thing is utterly mystifying,
: unless he had a different nusax that we have (e.g., "qodesh", rather
: than "qadosh").  "Qadosh" is an adjective, so the presence of the heh
: in front of both words is exactly what you would expect....

It would seem I was unclear earlier, so let me try again.

Any Hebrew adjective can be taken as a noun, particularly with a hei
hayedi'ah. HaGadol would be "the great ..." (adj) or as "the Great One".
It could be seen as a consequence of diqduq making pronouns optional.
Even present tense verbs are nouns. "Hamoleikh meiHodu ve'ad Qush --
the one who ruled from Hudo to Qush."

Thus, HaMelekh haQadosh is equally "the Holy King" and "the King, the
Holy One". Just as the gemara describes HaKel haGadol haGibor vehaNora
as for descriptions of G-d, not a noun and three adjectives.

I would argue that you find the BY mystifying only because you're
dividing parts of speach in a discussion of a language that doesn't
have distinct parts of speach in those roles.

I also argued this is a philosophical point. In the Semitic
worldview, there is no distinction between attribute and
essence. To be more specific, it's not a world of things connected
by relationships, but of things defined by the relationships in
which they participate. The essence is the set of attributes. See
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/12/semitic-perspective.shtml , where I
argue this notion explains issues as diverse as why the mishnah isn't
organized as cleanly as the Mishnah Torah, the lack of Law of Excluded
middle in halachic logic, etc... On the topic of grammar...

A man who is currently building is a builder. One can't separate who he
is from what he does. Also, this lack of distinction between essence
and accidental attributes is why any attribute can become a noun for
the thing.

...
: My understanding of "hammelekh hammishpat" has always been, since it
: appears in direct address, that the second heh is the definite
: article, of which (as in all construct forms) you would expect only
: one, whereas the first heh is the vocative heh.  This account for both
: heh's.

Sidenote defining "vocative" for people who didn't look it up: In the
sentence, "I need you to go to the store, Eli", the name "Eli" is being
used in the vocative case.

To answer R' Simon Montagu's question, see Shemu'el I 26:22, "Hinei
chanis, hamelekh -- here is a spear, O king." (The kesiv has "hachanis --
the spear.") And yes, the old-English "O" is usually used to denote the
vocative in translating these things. Although, in "Ana Hashem hoshi'ah
na" the vocatrive case has no prefix, I guess because the tetragrammaton
is a proper name.

It would give an interesting peshat in berakhos. RCVolzhiner (NhC II)
explains the shift from second to third person during the course of a
berakhah in mystical terms. That the speaker is descending the path of the
shefa "behind" the bread he is about to eat, going from closeness to G-d
(2nd person) to distance (3rd). This gives a more prosaic explanation. We
are saying "BA"H EM"H, O One Who brings out bread from the earth."

However, it would mean that those with a hei and those with "asher"
are very different in grammar. One puts the chasimah in vocative case,
describing the One to Whom we address the berakhah, the other sort has
a chasimah describing Hashem EM"H.

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
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