Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

I reserved the justification of the use which I made of the verse Joel II. 2 for a short excursus here. It is well known that in the Semitic languages the passive participle is frequently used instead of the active, similarly to the English possessed of instead of possessing, and the German Bedienter for Bedienender. In Arabic (in which the native grammarians call this usage mafʿûl bimaʿna-l-fâʿil) ḥijâb mastûr ‘the concealed curtain,’ is said for ‘the concealing,’ sâtir (Ḳorân, XVII. 47; compare al-Ḥarîrî, 2nd ed., p. 528. 17) etc., in Aramaic achîd ʿâmartâ ‘the conqueror of the world,’ for âchêd; râphûḳâ ‘digger,’ for râphêḳ (Talm. Babyl. Sôtâ, 9 b.); in Samaritan kethûbhâ ‘the writer,’ (Le Long, Bibl. sacra, p. 117; de Sacy, Mémoire sur la version arabe des livres de Moïse, in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, 1808, p. 16); in later Hebrew lâḳûach ‘buyer’ instead of lôḳêach kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who conceals the good he has received,’ hence ‘unthankful’ (see supra, p. 193), instead of kôphe; dôbh chaṭûph ‘a tearing bear,’ for chôṭêph (Targ. II. Gen. XLIX. 27). So also frequently in Biblical Hebrew, e.g. aha cherebh ‘holding swords’ for ôchazê, Song of Songs, III. 8); ʿerûkh milchâmâ ‘arranging battle’ for ʿôrêkh (Joel II. 5, compare Jer. VI. 23, L. 42, where the verb ʿ-r-kh, when used of drawing up the lines for battle, is followed by the preposition le; this, however, can be omitted, as in kôhên meshûach milchâmâ ‘a priest anointed for war,’ in the Mishna).

But to understand my explanation of the verse it must also be noticed that verbs which are regularly employed with a certain noun as subject or object in Hebrew can dispense with the noun, which then is implicitly included in the verb: a very natural proceeding. If I say, for instance, ‘he clapped,’ the verb contains in itself the notion ‘his hands.’ It is an elliptic, or rather pregnant construction where a noun is omitted, similar to that which is used to express motion by a verb not in itself implying motion;[769] e.g. Num. XX. 26, we-Aharôn yêʾâsêph ûmêth shâm ‘Aaron was gathered [to his fathers or his people] and died there.’ The words ‘and died there,’ render superfluous the complement el ʿammâw ‘to his peoples,’ which is added in v. 24. Similarly with s-ph-ḳ ‘to clap’ the object kappayîm ‘the hands’ can be omitted (Job XXXIV. 37; perhaps also Is. II. 6), etc. In the same list I put the pârûs or pôrês of our passage: kenâphayîm ‘the wings’ or kenâphâw ‘its wings’ being omitted. The expression ‘the spreading dawn’ is intelligible by itself, as ‘the dawn that spreads out its wings.’ But the fact that the complementary object after pârûs could be omitted proves how general was the conception of the Bird of the Dawn with outstretched wings, which found this mode of expression.