[Mesorah] Va'avadum v'eenu osam

Fri Aug 4 07:17:22 PDT 2017

Sometimes even the most knowledgeable of us make mistakes.  I am by far not the most knowledgeable, and I make mistakes all the time.

But I am a devoté of Aramaic, and have been from my youth, and in the Teimani shul here I hear the Targum read every Shabbos.  So I will take the liberty of pointing out a small error in R. Zero's exposition:

When one wants to say "they made them work" in Aramaic, the verb p-l-h. is in the Af‘el, as in the last quotation he brings (w'aflah.u).  However, the verb in "w'yifl'h.un b'hon" is in P‘al/Qal, and so it must mean "and they worked utilizing them/through them." Otherwise it would be "w'yafl'h.u yas-hon."

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org

________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Zev Sero via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Friday, August 4, 2017 10:07 AM
To: Akiva Miller; mesorah at aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] Va'avadum v'eenu osam

On 04/08/17 08:02, Akiva Miller via Mesorah wrote:
> But I'm very fuzzy on what "eenu" means in this pasuk. Perhaps it
> means "they (Mitzrayim) will torture them (Yisrael)", as in Shoftim
> 20:5. But then the words in Bereshis would have to switch
> subject/object in the middle of the pasuk: "They (Yisrael) will serve
> them (Mitzrayim), and they (Mitzrayim) will torture them (Yisrael)." I
> suppose this is possible, but it is not a normal way of speaking.

That is indeed the case, and it is *grammatically* ambiguous, but I put
it to you that it *is* a normal way of speaking because there is no real
ambiguity.  If I say "Yossi met Yanki and he hit him", you genuinely
don't know who hit whom, so I shouldn't say that.  But if you already
know that one of these is a violent boy and one is not, or if I specify
it in the sentence, "You know that awful Yossi, who's in my Yanki's
class, and who's always hitting other kids?  They were sitting together
yesterday and he hit him, and he came home crying", then you know the
subject in both of the last two phrases, and you are not confused by the
sudden switch of subjects.

Evidence for this:  In the first phrase of the pasuk the subject is
clearly "your seed"; and yet you seem to have no problem understanding
that in the second phrase the subject has changed to the owners of the
"land that is not theirs".  It's not at all obvious from the formal
grammar that it is the Jews who will serve the Egyptians and not the
other way around, but it's obvious to any normal reader, and you didn't
even notice.  So why cavil at changing back to "your seed" as the
subject for the next phrase?   Perhaps because "va`avadum ve`inu osam"
is punctuated as a single phrase, so the mind rebels at a change of
subject within it?

> I suspect that "eenu" actually means that "they (Yisrael) will BE
> tortured BY them (Mitzrayim)", similar to Eicha 5:11.

I'm not sure what you mean here.  "Inu" in that pasuk means the same as
everywhere else.  The Bavlim are the subject, and the women are the
object; Tziyon is the location.

> However, Onkelos may shed light on this point, because he makes the
> object a standalone word in both cases, and uses different words for
> those objects: "v'yifl'chun b'hon, veeanun yas'hon". I know enough
> Aramaic to equate peh-lamed-ches with ayin-beis-daled, and the second
> verb seems to have the same root in both languages. It is the object
> here that attracts my attention: What is the difference between
> "b'hon" and "yas'hon"?

Onkelos solves your problem by switching the subject and object of the
first prase.  "Veyiflechun behon" means "they will enslave them", so the
land's inhabitants are the subject, and "your seed" are the object of
both phrases.  In Hebrew that would be "Veya`avdu bahem", as in Vayikra
25:39, "lo sa`avod bo".   Had Onkelos kept the subject/object of the
original he would have written "veyiflechun lehon", which is "veya`avdu
lahem".    Note Shemos 1:13, "Ve'aflachu Mitzra'ei *yas* B'nei Yisrael".

--
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all
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