In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are a number of sentences in which there are different possibilities for the antecedent to which a pronoun refers. Yesterday my friend Frank Fenton pointed out another one, in Exodus 15;23:
"And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah." (KJV)
We usually assume here that it is the waters that are bitter, but it could also be said that the Israelites were bitter. Frank mentioned that the medieval commentator Rashi wrote about the possibility that "they" could be referring to the Israelites.
There are a couple of articles at the Grace & Knowledge about pronoun ambiguity. One is "Watch your Antecedents" in Issue10. I wrote a sequel to this article that is posted in Issue 28. The second article looks at situations where the ambiguity may be deliberate in order to indicate that the pronoun is intended to refer to each of two different antecedents. Exodus 15:23 may be one example of this phenomenon.
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grace and knowledge articles, pronouns
Posted at: 09:40 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
A number of years ago I wrote an article called "Watch your Antecedents!" that discusses three places in the book of Genesis where a pronoun can have two possible antecedents. In each case, it is interesting to consider both possibilities.
I recently ran across an article discussing four more examples of this phenomenon, three from Genesis and one from Exodus. All four of these involve people in close relationship. The article suggests that in such cases, the text may be saying that both antecedents are intended.
I find this intriguing and have written another article of my own on the subject.
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grace and knowledge articles, pronouns
Posted at: 03:28 PM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
