Re: Ephesians 5:31 - "cleave to"

From: Eric Weiss (eweiss@gte.net)
Date: Thu Jul 30 1998 - 12:32:03 EDT


Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> After carefully checking LSJ (on Perseus, not the new one with the Glare appendix), I find that the particular sense of "cleave to"--or as my wife, perhaps from old-time Appalachian mountain dialect, says, "be stuck fast to" ("Carl's stuck fast to the compuuter again")--I find that not only PROSKOLLAW but even KOLLAW appears especially in "passive" morphology in this distinct sense (pardon the anacoluthon, please).
>
> I rather think that this is an instance of the distinctive middle/reflexive sense of which I have written before and intend to write again sooner or later: the verb takes this middle/reflexive form that ought NOT to be understood as a PASSIVE ("divine" or otherwise--I think I've said before that I think this particular category of "divine passive" belongs in the same basket as the philosoophy major's determination to call "philosopher's fatigue" the aetiological reference to "God" in explanations of phenomena);

One reason I raised my question was that, if it were a middle/reflexive, I would have expected the future middle form (SOMAI, etc.) rather than the future passive (QHS) form. Is it that KOLLAW/PROSKOLLAW in the future is "deponent" (I know this is not the correct term, based on what you've written before - what I mean to say/ask is: in its future stem, does PROSKOLLAW take the passive morphology as its primary form and hence there is no typical "middle" future form for this verb?)

Also, by "divine passive," since I couldn't figure out why what looks like the simple weqatal of DaBaQ ("and he will cleave to") was changed in the LXX so the implied subject was God ("and he will be joined to" - by YHWH, presumably), I supposed that for some reason the translator saw God at work here and thus decided to translate it with a future passive.

> rather they are like German "es handelt sich um ..." and Spanish "aqu’ se habla espa–ol" and French "il s'agit de ...": some of these expressions are impersonal, yet they take a quasi personal subject. In English perhaps they come closest to those stative expressions using the verb "be" with a participle so that they look passive but aren't really, e.g. "That field is prepared for planting"--meaning, of course, NOT that the field is IN PROCESS of being prepared, but that it is
> IN A STATE of preparedness. In my review of LSJ listings for this sense I found it in the middle/reflexive or "passive" aorist & future morphology in Plato, Herodotus, and, one of the most striking instances of all, in Aeschylus' _Agamemnon_, where it is said of the whole lineage of Tantalus:
>
> GENOS KEKOLLHTAI PROS ATAi "The clan is stuck fast upon doom."

--
Eric S. Weiss
http://home1.gte.net/eweiss/index.htm
eweiss@gte.net
S.D.G.

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