The same is also evident from the fact that Mohammedan tradition makes Ḳâbil live at a place Ḳaneynâ near Damascus (Yâḳût, II. 588. 11), which can only be explained from its phonetic resemblance to Ḳâyin. Moreover, the connexion in which Abulfaraj (Historia Dynastiarum, p. 8) puts the invention of musical instruments with the daughters of Cain,[[767]] affords evidence for the former employment of the Biblical form of the name by the Arabs, since this tradition depends upon the Arabic word ḳaynâ ‘female singer.’
In the Oriental Christian Book of Adam, which Dillmann has translated, the word Ḳayin is interpreted ‘Hater;’ ‘for he hated his sister in his mother’s womb, and therefore Adam named him Ḳayin.’ Dillmann justly conjectures that this idea is suggested by a derivation of the name from ḳinnê ‘to be jealous of some one.’[[768]]
G. (Page [116].)
Grammatical Note on Joel II. 2.
I reserved the justification of the use which I made of the verse Joel II. 2 for a short excursus here. It is well known that in the Semitic languages the passive participle is frequently used instead of the active, similarly to the English possessed of instead of possessing, and the German Bedienter for Bedienender. In Arabic (in which the native grammarians call this usage mafʿûl bimaʿna-l-fâʿil) ḥijâb mastûr ‘the concealed curtain,’ is said for ‘the concealing,’ sâtir (Ḳorân, XVII. 47; compare al-Ḥarîrî, 2nd ed., p. 528. 17) etc., in Aramaic achîd ʿâmartâ ‘the conqueror of the world,’ for âchêd; râphûḳâ ‘digger,’ for râphêḳ (Talm. Babyl. Sôtâ, 9 b.); in Samaritan kethûbhâ ‘the writer,’ (Le Long, Bibl. sacra, p. 117; de Sacy, Mémoire sur la version arabe des livres de Moïse, in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, 1808, p. 16); in later Hebrew lâḳûach ‘buyer’ instead of lôḳêach kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who conceals the good he has received,’ hence ‘unthankful’ (see supra, p. [193]), instead of kôphe; dôbh chaṭûph ‘a tearing bear,’ for chôṭêph (Targ. II. Gen. XLIX. 27). So also frequently in Biblical Hebrew, e.g. aha cherebh ‘holding swords’ for ôchazê, Song of Songs, III. 8); ʿerûkh milchâmâ ‘arranging battle’ for ʿôrêkh (Joel II. 5, compare Jer. VI. 23, L. 42, where the verb ʿ-r-kh, when used of drawing up the lines for battle, is followed by the preposition le; this, however, can be omitted, as in kôhên meshûach milchâmâ ‘a priest anointed for war,’ in the Mishna). I put in the same category the shachar pârûs in the verse now being considered, where in my opinion the passive pârûs stands for the active pôrês.
But to understand my explanation of the verse it must also be noticed that verbs which are regularly employed with a certain noun as subject or object in Hebrew can dispense with the noun, which then is implicitly included in the verb: a very natural proceeding. If I say, for instance, ‘he clapped,’ the verb contains in itself the notion ‘his hands.’ It is an elliptic, or rather pregnant construction where a noun is omitted, similar to that which is used to express motion by a verb not in itself implying motion;[[769]] e.g. Num. XX. 26, we-Aharôn yêʾâsêph ûmêth shâm ‘Aaron was gathered [to his fathers or his people] and died there.’ The words ‘and died there,’ render superfluous the complement el ʿammâw ‘to his peoples,’ which is added in v. 24. Similarly with s-ph-ḳ ‘to clap’ the object kappayîm ‘the hands’ can be omitted (Job XXXIV. 37; perhaps also Is. II. 6), etc. In the same list I put the pârûs or pôrês of our passage: kenâphayîm ‘the wings’ or kenâphâw ‘its wings’ being omitted. The expression ‘the spreading dawn’ is intelligible by itself, as ‘the dawn that spreads out its wings.’ But the fact that the complementary object after pârûs could be omitted proves how general was the conception of the Bird of the Dawn with outstretched wings, which found this mode of expression.
H. (Page [153].)
Hajnal.
The Hungarian language shows how speech wavers in determining the colour of the rising Sun. The Hungarian word for Dawn, hajnal, is etymologically related to hó, which means snow. Therefore, the former must have originally denoted ‘the white;’[[770]] and hajnalpir, ‘the morning Redness,’ is literally ‘the Redness of the White.’ And the conception of the redness of the dawn has overcome that which must have prevailed when the expression hajnal came into use, but which is now only recognisable by the help of grammatical analysis. This is evident also from the fact that in the district of Érmellék people of red complexion are derisively called hajnal (i.e. like the red dawn, but strictly the white dawn).[[771]]
I. (Page [155].)
The Sun growing Pale and the Moon Red.
Although, as we have seen, mythology ascribes a reddish as well as a white colour to the Sun, yet it must be observed that this is so only at the earliest stage of the myth. A later period prefers to connect the Sun with the conception of a reddish or yellow colour, leaving the white to the Moon, as more appropriate. Lâbhân, ‘the white,’ has not fixed itself in the language as a name of the Sun, whereas its feminine Lebhânâ has, as a name of the Moon. The conception of colour which the myth attaches to Sun and Moon is well illustrated by a passage in which it is said that both Sun and Moon lose their natural colour through shame, viz., Is. XXIV. 23 wechâpherâ hal-lebhânâ û-bhôshâ ha-chammâ, ‘The moon turns red and the sun pale, for Jahveh of hosts rules on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.’ The distribution of the expressions for shame, bôsh and châphar, which elsewhere also stand in parallelism, is here not arranged haphazard, since the Sun and the Moon are spoken of—objects which are imagined to be provided with distinct colours of their own—but must correspond to the natural colours of each. Of men both verbs are employed without distinction; but ‘making white’ is the prevalent expression for putting to shame, so that in a later age, ‘to make white the face of a neighbour’ became a fixed formula in that sense (ham-malbîn penê chabhêrô or achwâr appê, Bâbhâ Meṣîʿâ fol. 58 b; compare Levy, Chald. Wörterb. I. 245 a; II. 173 a), and drove the ‘causing to blush red’ out of the field. The word bôsh for ‘to be ashamed’ is moreover even in the earlier times commoner than ch-ph-r. The former denotes ‘to grow white,’ and belongs etymologically to the same group as the Arabic bâḍ, whence abyad ‘white;’ the latter belongs to the group of the Arabic ḥ-m-r (with a change of the labials p and m), whence aḥmar ‘red.’ Accordingly, the expression that the Sun bôshâ ‘turns white,’ and the Moon châpherâ ‘turns red’ presupposes the idea of a reddish sun (Edôm) and a white moon (lebhânâ).
The same relation between the colours of the Sun and the Moon is also assumed by the old Persian poet Asadî in his ‘Rivalry between Day and Night,’ a poem to which we had occasion to refer on p. 95. In it Day says to Night:[[772]] ‘Although the Sun walks yellow, yet he is better than the Moon; although a gold-piece is yellow, yet it is better than a silver groat.’