Scholars struggle to delineate the differences between the middle and passive voice. This is particularly apparent in scholarship on the Niphal (Biblical Hebrew). Using recent linguistic research (Ágel 2017; 2007), this article attempts to assist Hebraists and exegetes by distinguishing the passive and middle Niphal. Applying the concept of linguistic perspective, the categories of endoactive and exoactive predicates are illustrated on mlṭ and nṣl. In sum, this article demonstrates that linguistic perspective is able to clarify semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic complexities of the Niphal.

Three major English translations, NRSV, ESV, and NASB, render וְאֵיךְ נֹאמַר אֵלָיו מֵת הַיֶּלֶד וְעָשָׂה רָעָה׃‎ as “How then can we tell him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” These translations insert the reflexive pronoun “himself” as the object of עשׂה‎. While such a reading is possible, it is not at all probable when we take into account how reflexives are expressed in Biblical Hebrew, as well as the syntax and semantics of עשׂה‎. This article contributes to our understanding of 2 Sam 12.18 not by offering a new translation of וְעָשָׂה רָעָה‎, but by providing a linguistic explanation for why translators should reject the reflexive “harm himself” and instead render the phrase as “he may do harm” (so MEV).

This article responds to the innovative and stimulating research by Ellen van Wolde in a previous volume of Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. She claims that the Niphal is middle voice and can be passive, ‘if (and only if) an external argument, coded as an external Agent, is present’. My research however, demonstrates that such a description of the passive is both inadequate in view of the world’s languages and incongruent with Niphal. In addition, my response lays bare how such a prescription of the middle voice to the Niphal in the Hebrew Bible is circulus probando and unconvincing.

Zusammenfassung:Reflexivität ist zu einem bedeutenden Forschungsbereich in der Linguistik geworden. Im biblischen Hebräisch wird jedoch wenig über Reflexivität gesprochen. Darüber hinaus tendieren Sprachforscher dazu, die über Reflexivität schreiben, dazu uneinig darüber zu sein, was ein und was kein Kennzeichen der Reflexivität ist. Meine Studien von נפשׁ tragen zur biblisch-hebräischen Grammatik und Lexikografie bei, indem sie aufzeigen, (1) inwiefern נפשׁ als ein direkter reflexiver Marker dient und (2) wie Reflexivität sich im biblischen Hebräisch zu den Sprachen der Welt verhält.

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