Paging Mr. Tumnus
it begins: Devarim/Deuteronomy 32:1-2
האזינו השמים ואדברה / ותשמע הארץ אמרי פיListen, sky, and I will speak / and the earth will hear my mouth's words
יערוף כמטר לקחי / תיזל כטל אמרתי
כשעירים עלי דשא / וכרביבים עלי עשב
My lesson will drip like rain / my speech will flow like dew
Like se‘irim on the lawn / and like revivim on the grass...
So, what are שעירים and רביבים ?
שעיר usually means goat, as frequently in listings of sacrifices. According to pretty much everyone, here שעירים means something along the lines of 'rain', 'raindrops', 'storms' or 'stormy rainfall'. However, there's another meaning to the word שעיר...
ולא יזבחו עוד את זבחיהם לשעירים
אשר הם זונים אחריהם
חוקת עולם תהיה זאת להם לדורותם
Old JPS translation:And they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto the satyrs, after whom they go astray. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.
Other translations understand שעירים to be 'goat-demons', which I guess is a pretty good (albeit negative) description of a satyr. Other occurances of satyr-type שעירים include:
Yesha‘yahu/Isaiah 13:21:
...and satyrs shall dance there.
So, due to these other "שעירים", I've always imagined the שעירים and רביבים of Ha’azinu as some kind of legendary wilderness-dwelling monsters. Not evil people-eating monsters, of course, but monsters nonetheless. Like satyrs, or fauns, or centaurs... or who knows what else kind of mythic-style possibly half-human half-animal beasts.
It's a completely different image — Moshe's words passing over and penetrating the minds of the listeners like rain storms over the fields and meadows, or Moshe's words dancing in their heads and inspiring them with love of God like legendary creatures frollicking in unknown lands...
כי שם יהוה אקרא / הבו גודל לאלהינו
carved on the walls of the caverns by Steg (dos iz nit der šteg) at 10/11/2005 04:08:00 PM
5 Comments:
So, what are שעירים and רביבים?
Sa`ir and Raviv sound like Israeli last names to me.
כי שם יהוה אקרא / הבו גודל לאלהינו
בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד!!
PS: Did I leave Vox Graeca or the Devarim volume of תורת חיים at your apartment? I can't find them.
I seem to remember you putting them in your bag, but i can check.
Perhaps akin to a ghoul (ghawl), a human-eating monster of the wastelands.
The mixture of herd animal with human, in various forms, seems peculiarly middle eastern.
This we'll never see: "...and so the savage chicken-boy, the daemon from the sands, came to the village and kept everybody awake all night with his squawking. Until someone decided to shlug kapores".
Pity.
back of the hill:
ROTFL :-)
ghoul is ghawl ? i assumed it was ghuul
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