Thursday: A Good VSA Morning & the Limits of an Exhaustive Concordance

i call it exhausting because that's what it's like to lift the book!

   On Thursdays, for now, Max and i attend VSA's Urban Artisans program. 
   He handled it
even better this week than last, though it got very stressful at the end.
  Usually two hours of an organized actiivity is all he is up to, but he got through this fine.  Max enjoys working with the clay, shaping it and putting it into the premade pots to form a new pot.
  Anyway, Max seemed aware of that he had done welll too.  On his self-evaluation, he checked that he had had a bad attitude, but kept on anyway.  Which was true.  i was proud of him.  He even was willing to follow the teaching artist into the next room twice without me.

About that Concordance

  i look up the weirdest things.  But it's helpful to have an exhaustin* Exhaustive Concordance, because, if i match the concordance to the translation in my mind, i've always been able to find the verse i'm looking for.
  i like it for other reasons, too.  i like to see in what other places a given Greek or Hebrew word is used in the Bible, because it adds to the meaning and richness of the text.
  But it didn't work that way today.
   i've been reading Tivka Frymer-Keensky's work, Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories.  Usually we just accept the narrative as it is, without wondering about the people who have appeared earlier or later but aren't in a particular bit in the story.  Often those people are women, with something important to say.  She brings fascinating cultural lore and language background to her own publication.
  Which is how the concordance came in today.  When expounding on the women's stories, she gives her own translations of the Biblical text.  And there was something i wanted to check out.
  Usually i will check one English translation against another.  What does it mean, for example, when - Exodus is it? - says "her fruit depart and no harm come"  Does it mean the baby dies and nothing else happens, or the baby is born early?  English translations pretty much say one of those three things.
  Ambiguity on a critical question.
 The passage i was looking at was II Samuel 13, where Amnon raped his half sister.  Frymer-Kensky's translation pointed out Amnon's extreme politeness to his servant, and extreme rudeness to Tamar, using "please" when asking his servant to escort  "that" out.
  Frymer-Kensky said that translators aren't so blunt as the original, and i wanted to see it for myself.
  In BibleGateway.com's All Translations page for II Samuel 13:17, the difference in attitude is plain, but no reference anywhere is to be seen to "that."
  And the concordance didn't help.
  You see, "that" is one of those very common words, which will be of no help in finding a passage.  There's more than 50 of them.
  gotta learn Hebrew. . . .