Thursday, January 27, 2022

Zvi Malachi and John Tvedtnes on wordplays involving מקור maqôr and מקום maqôm

  

On מקור maqôr

 

“Maqôr” – The Womb as a Source (“maqôr”) and as a Grave

 

[In] JT Berakhot 2:5 (14) states: “May your fountain” (maqôr) he blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth” (Prov 5:18), i.e., may your arrival at the grave be blessed. R. Berekhya said: “There is a time to give birth and a time to die (Qoh 3:2). Blessed is the man whose hour of death is like the house of his birth.”

 

Maqôr in this context means “womb.” In the language of the Sages, it is also referred to as the “grave” (BT Shabbat 129a), since it is like a grave for the fetus. Just as this “grave” is the origin of the infant’s life, so too is the grave of a man the origin for resurrection of the dead, as they will be born from it. Therefore, the term maqôr (“source”) may allude to both the womb and the grave, and to birth and death. (Zvi Malachi, “’Creative Philology’ As a System of Biblical and Talmudic Exegesis: Creating Midrashic Interpretations form Multi-Meaning Words in the Midrash and the Zohar,” in Puns and Pundits: Word Play in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Literature, ed. Scott B. Noegel [Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 2000], 272)

 

On מקום maqôm

 

One that has struck me is the Hebrew word maqom, which literally means “place of arising.”  It comes from a verb meaning to arise, stand up, stand on one's feet. It is interesting that in some Bible passages it should be referred to as a grave or a tomb, such as in Job 16:18; Ezekiel 39:11; Ecclesiastes 3:20; 6:6. Sometimes it is used as a place where the spirits of the dead go. In Phoenician, which is related to Hebrew, using the same ancient alphabet and spoken in ancient Lebanon and Canaan, the term is used only for a gravesite. There are number of tombs of Phoenician kings that have an inscription reading “Do not disturb this maqom.” What interests me here is that in the Book of Mormon I found eleven places where the word 'place' (which is the usual translation of maqom in the Bible) is used where someone has died, or where he was buried, or where his spirit went after he died. So it's used in that range of meanings, and in Joseph Smith's day nobody had ever suggested that those were meanings applicable to the Hebrew word. All that came about long after his time. (John A. Tvedtnes, Some Book of Mormon "Hits")

 

Tvedtnes does not list his 11 examples from the Book of Mormon, but perhaps they included the following:

 

And it came to pass that Ishmael died, and was buried in the place which was called Nahom. (1 Nephi 16:34)

 

Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment. (2 Nephi 28:23)

 

Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life (Mosiah 18:9)