Saturday, January 15, 2022

Holger Gzella on פלח plḥ in Biblical Aramaic (e.g., Daniel 7:14)

 

Biblical Aramaic employs plḥ exclusively with a religious connotation: in Dnl. 3:12, 14, 18, 28 for idol worship that Daniel and his companions avoid, in 6:17, 21 for the worship of the true God, and, finally, in 7:14, 27 for the defining relationship of the whole world—all nations and especially all powers—with God at the dawn of his eschatological kingdom. Ezra 7:24 employs the participle plḥy byt ʾlhʾ in a more restricted, probably summary, sense for the other cultic personnel in addition to various functions previously mentioned explicitly (Holger Gzella, “פלח,” in Holger Gzella, ed., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 16 vols. [trans. Mark E. Biddle; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2018], 607)