Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/1294

stone, secondly (b), by understanding the statement, “they did work at the house of Jehovah on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month” (Hag 1:14-15), not according to its natural meaning as relating to their building upon the foundation already laid, but as signifying the removal of the rubbish and the procuring of wood and stone, that is to say, as referring to the preparations for building; and lastly (c), by explaining אשׁר יסּד וגו in Hag 2:19 as signifying the laying of a fresh or second foundation. These assumptions are so forced, that if there were not a simpler and easier way of removing the difficulty raised, we would rather assume that there had been a corruption of the text.
But the thing is not so desperate as this. In the first place, we must pronounce the opinion that למן היּום וגו is an explanatory apposition to מיּום עשׂרים וגו an unfounded one. The position of the athnach in ומעלה furnishes no tenable proof of this. Nor can the assumption that lemin is synonymous with min be sustained. In support of the statement, “that lemin only differs from min in the greater emphasis with which it is spoken,” Ewald (§218, b), has merely adduced this passage, Hag 2:18, which is supposed to exhibit this with especial clearness, but in which, as we have just shown, such an assumption yields no appropriate meaning. למן followed by עד or ועד does indeed occur in several instances in such a connection, that it appears to be used instead of the simple min. But if we look more closely at the passages (e.g., Exo 11:7; Jdg 19:30; 2Sa 7:6), the ל is never superfluous; and lemin is simply used in cases where the definition so introduced is not closely connected with what goes before, but is meant to be brought out as an independent assertion or additional definition, so that in all such cases the ל “has the peculiar force of a brief allusion to something not to be overlooked, a retrospective glance at the separate parts, or a rapid summary of the whole, like our 'with regard to,' 'as regards' (Lat. quoad);” and it only fails to correspond entirely to this, “from the fact that ל is only expressible in the softest manner, and indeed in our language can hardly be expressed in words at all, though it quite perceptibly yields this sense” (Ewald, §310). למקצת is also used in this sense in Dan 1:18 instead of מקצת (Hag 2:15), whilst in other cases (e.g., in למרחוק in 2Sa 7:19) it indicates the