[Avodah] Kuf-resh-aleph versus kuf-resh-heh

Akiva Miller via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Wed Aug 16 04:45:43 PDT 2017


.
At first, I was going to pose these nitpicky questions on our Mesorah list.
But then I found some answers, and I decided to share my journey with the
whole chevra. If it doesn't put you to sleep from boredom, please let me
know what you think. Thanks in advance.

Shmos 1:10 - Paro starts panicking over the Jewish Problem. First, they're
multiplying, and then, "ki sikrena milchama..."

1. What is the root of Sikrena? Kuf resh aleph, or kuf resh heh?

2a. If it is kuf resh heh - "if war happens" - then what is the aleph for?
Is this a kri/ksiv situation? Does anyone explicitly refer to it as a
kri/ksiv?

2b. If it is kuf resh aleph, then why is it that I can't find anyone
(Jewish or not) who translates it as "if they proclaim war"? Why does every
single translation and peirush render it as "if war occurs", or similar? Or
do you know of any exceptions that I couldn't find?

3. What form is this word? My guess is that it is Kal, future, 3rd person
feminine plural: "They(f) will...". That fits well with "proclaim", if
"they(f)" refers to the attacking nations. But if the root is kuf resh heh,
I don't know why the plural would be used. Is "milchama" some sort of
plural or collective noun?

Other relevant information:

RSR Hirsch says that "sikrena" is a plural form, and therefore "milchama"
is probably not the subject but the object. for the word's meaning, he
refers us to Yeshaya 41:22, where this same word occurs. But as I see it,
these words are not spelled the same: Where Shemos spells it with an aleph,
Yeshaya has a yud. (I suppose Rav Hirsch considers this difference
insignificant, but I'm not knowledgable enough to understand why.)

I did find one lone voice who says that the root of "sikrena" is
"read/call" and not "happen/occur". Namely, Mandelkern's Concordance.
Yeshaya 41:22 appears on 1047d, in the root kuf-resh-heh. But he places our
pasuk, Shemos 1:10, on 1043c, in the root kuf-resh-aleph.

Another data point from Mandelkern: His opinion is that "sikrena" in Shemos
1:10 is a third-person plural verb. This is different from the
second-person plural verb, which is spelled exactly the same, and appears
in Rus 1:20 and 1:21, and in the Concordance on 1042a. I suspect that
Mandelkern would endorse "*they* will proclaim war" as a correct
translation.

Finally, I tried a non-Jewish website devoted to translation issues.
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/7122.htm is based on the Brown-Driver-Briggs
concordance, and other similar sources. I probably could have gotten the
same information from Mandelkern, but seeing their English translation
on-screen made these examples jump out at me:

Bereshis 42:4 - [Yaakov] said, "Lest disaster *happen* [to Binyamin]."

Bereshis 49:1 - Yaakov said, "... I will tell you what will *happen* to you
at the end of days."

Vayikra 10:19 - Aharon told Moshe, "... such has *happened* to me..."

Devarim 22:6 - When you *happen* upon a bird's nest...

In all of the above, the Torah's word is spelled with a kuf-resh-ALEPH
root. I find myself forced to concede that there is strong evidence (dare I
call it "proof"?) that in addition to the usual meanings "read" and "call",
kuf-resh-aleph can also mean "happen".

Having said that, I was tempted to take this even farther. That page on
BibleHub brings a lot examples where they translate kuf-resh-aleph as
"meet". At first glance, I did not take it seriously; I felt that our
common translation as "call" was more appropriate. For example, Shemos 5:3.
where Moshe and Aharon tell Paro, "The God of the Hebrews nikra to us, so
let us go for three days..." In my mind, this meant "Hashem called to us",
and I rejected BibleHub's translation of "... has met with us." But then I
read ("happened upon"? pun intended!) ArtScroll's translation, which is
"...happened upon us." I was surprised by this, but I was even more
surprised when I saw RSR Hirsch on this pasuk, where he tells us to look at
Shemos 3:18, where he shows that these two roots (kuf resh aleph and kuf
resh heh) are indeed similar.

And so I conclude that it is entirely legitimate to translate Shemos 1:10
as "when a war happens".

Does all this teach us anything about the small aleph in Vayikra 1:1? I
leave that as an exercize for the reader.

Akiva Miller
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