Re.: “He hateth putting away” (KJV):
First, the spelling of šallaḥ (“sending away,” “divorce”)
in Hebrew can represent only two possible grammatical forms: the infinitive
construct or the second masculine singular imperative. Now, the previous Hebrew
word, śānē’, “hate,” is a transitive verb—that is, takes an expressed
object. Therefore, it is much more natural to take the following word, šallaḥ
, as a verbal noun (i.e., an infinitive) and as the object word of šallaḥ
(i.e., “he hates to divorce” or “he hates divorcing”) than to
construe šallaḥ as a
second-person singular imperative (“send away”), which not only denies śānē’
the object it requires but also involves an awkward and confusing shift in
person: “For be has hated, [you] send away!” (John S. Bergsma, The Bible and
Marriage: The Two Shall Become One Flesh [A Catholic Biblical Theology of
the Sacraments; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2024], 142)
Re.: “for one covereth
violence with his garment” (KJV):
This clause reads literally in the Hebrew “and [he]
covers over his garment [with] violence.” To smooth the English, the RSV2CE
translates the Hebrew perfect form, “he covers,” as a participle,” covering.”
It is possible to repoint the third masculine singular prefect form, kissāh,
as the masculine singular participle, kōseh, to appease our English (or
Latinate) grammatical sensibilities, but this emendation is unnecessary. The
whole clause is functioning grammatically as a second object of “he [the LORD]
hates” earlier in the verse. While we ould prefer a relative pronoun at the
head of the clause (e.g., ‘āšer or še-) to make the grammatical
relationship clearer (i.e., “and the one who [wa-‘āšer] covers”),
nonetheless the “unmarked” or “bare” relative clause is by no means unusual in
biblical Hebrew; see Robert D. Holmstedt, “The Relative
Clause in Biblical Hebrew: A Linguistic Analysis” (PhD diss., University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 2002), 107-14. (Ibid., 142-43 n. 46)
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