Who conceals her conceals the
wind, / and her name is called “right hand.” The Hebrew is unintelligible,
as the translation indicates, and even with emendation it is hard to make sense
of this verse. The “her” may refer to the nagging wife of the previous verse,
in which case the idea is that it is impossible to hide her because she is
everywhere. (The verb for the initial “conceals” is plural in the Hebrew but
has been emended to a singular to accord with the second “conceals.”) The
literal sense of the second verset in the received text is “and the oil of his
right hand will call [or will be called],” weshemen yemino yiqraʾ. This
has been emended, partly in accordance with the Septuagint, to read weshemah
yamin yiqareiʾ. Even so, the meaning is unclear. Perhaps, by a stretch, it
could mean, she is thought of as the right hand—that is, powerful—because there
is no way to conceal or repress her. Amid all this confusion, Fox interestingly
detects a pun: tsafan, “conceal,” suggests tsafon, “north”; and yamin,
“right hand,” is an alternate term for “south.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew
Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 3:438)
