הערה לשטר החוב העברי חבר-צאלים 49

The form ואשה in XḤev/Ṣe 49 (line 9: ואשה את השטר הזא תסלע הזוא (אנמקבל המך שאפרך בכל זמן שת[ומ]ר לי is ambiguous. It can be interpreted either as 'I shall carry' (=I shall receive) from the root, נש"א or as 'I shall claim' from the root,נש"י which parallels the Aramaic root.רש"י Based on two lexical considerations, I argue that the first interpretation, 'receive', is the more likely. First of all, the Hebrew root,נש"י in the sense of 'claim', occurs only in the Bible and in the Babylonian Talmud and is not found in the Palestinian literature. Because this is a Hebrew verb, chosen especially for a Hebrew document, and not an Aramaic one, this rules out the assumption that here a Babylonian lexeme made its way into the Palestinian region; in Aramaic, the meaning of נש"י is 'to forget'. Secondly, in the Aramaic and Nabatean documents from the Judean desert, רש"י denotes only 'authority' and 'permission', and not 'claim' as in Eastern Aramaic and in Akkadian. This root is also found in the Hebrew documents from the Judean desert (רשי,רשות) and apparently the scribes felt no need to replace it.