מינוח כיתתי ופרשנות המקרא: הוראת הפועל 'אות' בכתבי קומראן

The language of the Qumran scrolls reflects a living dialect of Hebrew. At the same time, Qumran Hebrew contains many expressions representing a 'biblicizing jargon'. Distinguishing elements belonging to the living dialect from elements reflecting imitation of the Bible in the Qumran scrolls is not always easy. One situation where it can be claimed that the biblicizing style is at work is when a biblical word freely alternates with a postbiblical word that may be regarded as a lexical gloss on the biblical one. In this case, it seems the Qumran writers used biblical words that had fallen into disuse in a meaning arrived at via exegesis. As an example, the use of the verb אות in CD 20:7 and 4Q266 Frag. 11 (4QDamascus Documenta), 14–15 is analyzed. Whereas in biblical usage this verb seems to denote 'to agree' and 'to benefit' in Mishnaic usage, in the Damascus Covenant its meaning is 'to share, to associate', as indicated by the context and by the fact that parallels in the Rule of the Community use the verb התערב 'to share, to associate'. Evidently, this meaning was attributed to the biblical verb אות on the basis of a contextual exegesis of Gen. 34:15, 22, 23. This receives confirmation from Targum Neofiti and from a Geniza fragment where אות is translated by the Aramaic verb ʾtʿrb