It is not in our power to gauge the whilom wealth of the Hebrew language,* and far more of the copious Arabic vocabulary may have been retained by the Canaanites than is ordinarily supposed. Most of the books of the OT offer examples of hapax legomena that can be satis- factorily explained from the Arabic, whether in the form of antiquated phrases for which the ordinary language employs other synonyms (e.g. Dt 27° naon, Arab. uskut, ‘ be silent,’ in every way parallel to the herald’s ‘O yez’), or of dialectic words (e.g. 283, Arab. nisab, Jg 3”), or of words which there is no reason to suppose to have been rare, but which for one reason or another the biblical writers have not elsewhere occasion to employ (e.g. ayroy ‘sneezing,’ Job 4113).
Arabisms in this sense ean be found not only in the latest biblical writers,+ but even in the frag-
*In the Concordance published at Warsaw, 1883, roots are given in large type, ἜΣ (counting each conjugation sepa- rately) are marked with a circle, and nouns with a star. According to computations made for this article, the numbers are respectively 2058, 2930, 3937.
t So Ec 91 333 ‘ to try,’ Arab. bara; in Lisdn al-arab, ν. 153, several curious passages of old authors are cited in which this word occurs. The etymology is given by Ges. Thes., but omitted in the Ozf. Heb. Lex. 220 wx) can scarcely have been thought out by the writer from the biblical wxv3, but must represent an old word (Arab. ya’isa). A few striking Arabisms may be collected here. Gn 9812 asp ‘a staircase,’ Arab. sullam; 4016 "n ‘white bread,’ Arab. huwwari; 4227 noaDN ‘baggage,’ Arab. amtvat, plur. of mata’ (it is curious that Mohammed uses this word in Koran, xii. 25, where this verse is represented ‘when they opened their baggage matd- ‘ahum’. The change of y to n is caused by the fol'owing n: in Egypt it is now customary to say nndy for ΠΡΌ, ΤΠΙΞῚΝ for ΠΡΞῚΝ [Tantavy, Grammaire, p. v.]); Ex 59 3B
LANGUAGE OF THE OLD TEST.
LANGUAGE OF THE OLD TEST. 239
ments of Ben-Sira, and in the New-Hebrew of the Mishna.* As borrowing from the Arabs is highly improbable, and in many cases shown by the pho- netic changes to be impossible, the whole stock of words common to Canaanitish and Arabie must have constituted the linguistic capital of the former language. The parallelistic style, which is probably earlier than the migration, served to retain in use many synonyms which might other- wise have disappeared ;+ but without a far greater mass of literature than has come down to us we could not pronounce without hardihood on the original bulk of the Canaanitish vocabulary, or deny any genuine Arabic root a place in it.
4, Secondary Sources.—Of the roots and words which the Hebrew vocabulary contains, a great number cannot be identified in the Arabie dic- tionary. Of these, however, some seem to have been current in Arabia before the migration, for we find them in the Ethiopic language, which we know to have sprung from a 8. Arabian dialect.§ A few more are stamped as Arabic by their occurrence in ὃ. Arabian inscriptions.|| But this still leaves a great number unaccounted for. We have therefore to recognize in Canaanitish a non- Arabic element, and must endeavour to account for its origin.
According to the biblical account, the patriarchs and their families having acquired Hebrew in Canaan, sojourned in Egypt, but retained their own language, which was brought back to
Canaan. Although the seclusion of the Israel- ites in Egypt, on which some of the narratives insist, would account for their failing to adopt the
language of Egypt, their dependent position there would lead us to expect that their Hebrew would
‘ye make idle,’ Arab. tufrightina; 26° n\>:apDp, Arab. mukabilat; Ly 1938 nan>, Arab. kitabat; Nu 1915 ny ‘a cover’ or ‘lid,’ Arab. simdd; 258 3) ‘a tent,’ Arab. kubbah ; Dt 67 op23v ‘thou shalt teach them,’ Arab. sanna ‘to prescribe,’ whence ‘the sunnah’; 1857 mY, Arab. sala; Jos 1012 o)7 ‘remain,’ ‘abide,’ Arab. dwm; Is 1015 “jd, Arab. niinshar ‘saw’ ; 33°0 ,ys ‘to migrate,’ Arab, za’ana; 324 3>y, Arab. ‘ilj ‘barbarous’ ; 4126 py ‘truthful,’ Arab. giddik ; Jer 128 yay, Arab. dabu'un ; Ezk 168 nosy ‘loud-tongued,’ Arab. salitat.
*So np Bikkuréth, vi. 11; mw tb. vii. 6.
+ So Job 1619 ‘my witness ("7y) is in the heavens, and my testis I7y in the heights’; 185 3:3y parallel to six; Pr 2225 abxn parallel to 7529; 273 by3 parallel with 735. The reten- tion of 7309 (Phon.) and 093 (Egyp.?) as names for ‘gold’ is perhaps due to poetical necessity.
Some parallels between the expressions of the Arabs and the OT are put together by G. Jacob, Studien m Arabischen Dichtern, iv. (Halle, 1897), and by E. Nestle, Muarginalien, p. 68ff. A longer list could be got from the commentaries of A. Schultens and F. Hitzig. Some curious cases are: ‘ when their foot slippeth’ (Dt 32% etc.), for ‘when misfortune befalls them,’ in Arabic zalla 'l-kadam (Koran, xvi. 96); commencing letters with ‘and now’ (2K 56 102), in Arabic amma ba'du, t.e. ‘after compliments’: ‘swallowing my spittle’ (Job 719) used for ‘resting a moment’ as in Arabic; ‘hast thou listened in the council of God,’ etc. (Job 158), bears a curious likeness to the theory that the Jinns used to listen there and so learn mysteries (Koran, xv. 18). The phrase 0°35 nbn ‘to curry favour’ is perhaps to be explained from the Arab. khala@ in Koran, xii. 9, ‘the face of your father shall be clear (yakhlu) for you.’ Much of the ‘eloquence’ of the Koran can be illus- trated from that of the OT, e.g. ‘ask the village’ for ‘the people of the village’ in Koran, xii. 82, resembles Dt 938,