Fun with Hebrew: In Ecclesiastes

2014-04-22 09.03.48 am

“It goes to the south and whirls round to the north, whirling
whirling, the wind goes and in its whirling around the wind returns.”

This is a bizarre verse structurally.  There seems to be an extra “going around” (sovev) in each line, and one too few directional marker in the second half. The verse is circuitous and confusing in its very word structure. Furthermore, the wind hits the reader “to the south” and “to the north,” whirling him around, before he ever knows it is the wind that is doing it. The motion manifests itself prior to the naming, as the wind itself moves us before we name it.

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