Hebrew Help: The Master and the Scholar in Malachi 2:12

[Sam Jer]

Malachi 2:12, in Hebrew, reads:

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יַכְֿרֵ֨ת יְהֹוָ֜ה לָאִ֨ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֤ר יַעֲשֶׂ֙נָּה֙ עֵ֣ר וְעוֹנֶ֔הֿ מֵאׇהֳלֵ֖י יַעֲקֹ֑בֿ וּמַגִּ֣ישׁ מִנְחָ֔הֿ לַיהֹוָ֖ה צְבָאֽוֹתֿ׃

(AV: The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts.)

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It is translated Master and Scholar, or something else with a teacher/student connotation, in the older translations; including, it seems, Jerome's Vulgate; despite this not being a typical translation of er or oneh; while modern translations go in all kinds of directions: some opt to remove it completly, some just leave the ambiguity in and translate the one who is awake and the one who answers, some take some other translation.

Now, I may speak Hebrew, but I am not a scholar nor the son of a scholar, and so am left confused as to what is happening here. How did they get to "master and scholar"? How did they get to these other renderings? And if it is "the one who is awake and the one who answers", what does that even mean?

 

[iainduguid]

This is what I wrote in my commentary concerning the idiom that the KJV renders "the master and the scholar", which I translated (fairly loosely) as "whoever he may be" (cf CSB, ESV):

The phrase ‘whoever he may be’ is an attempt to render an obscure idiom. It is variously explained and may mean ‘the one who calls out and the one who answers’ or ‘witness and respondent,’ if we emend the text slightly. If the latter translation is accepted, it may extend culpability to include those who acted as official witnesses at such weddings.

In a context like this, where the specifics of an idiom are hard to render clearly, it's better to convey the main point (the inclusiveness of this threat) than to risk mistranslating the idiom and sending people off in wrong directions.

 

[Sam Jer]

This is what I wrote in my commentary concerning the idiom that the KJV renders "the master and the scholar", which I translated (fairly loosely) as "whoever he may be" (cf CSB, ESV):

The phrase ‘whoever he may be’ is an attempt to render an obscure idiom. It is variously explained and may mean ‘the one who calls out and the one who answers’ or ‘witness and respondent,’ if we emend the text slightly. If the latter translation is accepted, it may extend culpability to include those who acted as official witnesses at such weddings.

In a context like this, where the specifics of an idiom are hard to render clearly, it's better to convey the main point (the inclusiveness of this threat) than to risk mistranslating the idiom and sending people off in wrong directions.

Thank you rev. Duguid. I guess this explains those of the modern translations that opted for something similar to the CSB.

but can עֵר er mean "one who calls out" in Biblical Hebrew? If it can, what would it even mean?

 

[iainduguid]

The answer is "maybe". We'd expect something more like "the one who awakes and the one who answers" The Talmud renders it as teacher and student, which is probably where the KJV gets its translation: the teacher being the one who "awakes" the student and the student who responds with an answer (so also Vulgate, which may be KJV's immediate source). My colleague Jonny Gibson, whose PhD was on Malachi, suggests that it might be hendiadys, with the combined phrase meaning something like "kith and kin". But everyone agrees the phrase is very obscure.