Genesis 3:7
They are Awakened
And they are being opened, eyes of the both of themselves, and they are perceiving that the cities of themselves are themselves. And they are sewing together a leaf of a fig tree, and they are making for themselves a girdle.And the eyes of the two shall be opened, and they shall know that they are naked; and they shall sew together the leaves of the fig tree, and shall make to themselves girdles.
And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed leaves of the fig tree, and made girdles for themselves.
And the eyes of both were opened, and they perceived that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons to go round them.
Footnotes
| 117 | Cities of Themselves Hebrew וידעו כי עירמם הם Firstly, notice that עירמם irmam is different from ערומים arumim "naked ones" which was just used in Genesis 2:25. The orthographic form עירם and (עירמם) is notably ambiguous in unpointed Hebrew due to the convergence of several homographic roots. It may derive from:
What could it be? Scholars assume the letter י was dropped from "naked ones" עירמים irrumim in their interpretations. BDB simply adds the missing letter: "plural עֵירֻמִּים) Genesis 3:7;" (BDB #5903) Yet, that is not quite what is written. For our part, we don't like adding letters, and try to avoid it. Irrumim is not the same as arumim. Furthermore, this does not follow the usual pattern of word constructs that end with two letter ממ מם. The ending מם occurs around 240 times in the Hebrew scriptures and is usually the third person plural suffix as in ירומם "he is exalting them" (Hosea 11:7) or תקומם "he is standing them up" (Isaiah 58:12) or adverbial. The phrase כי עירמם הם is not simple to decipher, especially when obscured by so much muck. The construct עירמם irmam doesn't occur anywhere else in the scriptures, but its components do. Traditionally it is taken for an "irregular" form of ערום arum the masculine for "naked," similar to the more common feminine ערוה arvah "nakedness." These stem from the root ערה arah (Strong's #6168). But there is quite the overlap of tri-literal roots here. The noun עיר is a masculine noun and also means "city". The plural form of cities is the contracted ערים irim in which the first letter yod is dropped, hence the straightforward, well-attested translation of "their cities." The word "city" itself is derived from the root עור (Strong's #5782) meaning "to awaken, arouse." The word תפקחנה (tipkakhnah) is the third person plural feminine form of the verb פקח (paqach), meaning "to open." It can be "they are opening" or "they are being opened." The feminine plural verb construct has the same consonantal spelling for all the strong incomplete verb forms except the reflexive
Additionally, we also find that עיר means "young male donkey" (Strong's #5895). The similarity between these three words could certainly cause a lot of confusion. The plural for "young colts/donkeys" can be either עירים or עירם (cf. Genesis 32:15) thus the plural of עירם with the possessive suffix ם- "their young colts/donkeys" could also be valid translation, however, the context doesn't accommodate this meaning. When it comes to challenges like these, the perception of the context or the contextual bias, becomes an end-all. |
| 118 | Strongs #2290 ha-gorat. Feminine singular construct of חגורה. A girdle means waist-belt and such it surrounds, or encircles the body at the loin/waist. Again the scholars of the past assumed it as a plural construct with a "missing" vav חגרת for חגרות. The plural was craftily "fixed in" by way of Masorete vowel pointing— חֲגֹרֹֽת whereas the pronunciation could now be as though it were a plural hagorot. But the singular meaning is plainly attested to in 1 Kings 2:5: בחגרתו "the girdle of himself." |
