4 ms·

The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."

m463 2mo ago
That sounds like a person resigned to his death. The other line sounds like a plea to others. I can't help but wonder about LLM translations... will they do it better or worse or just different? I can wonder if it might be with less bias, or with a better body to pull from, but I can see it can be slop too.
- Joker_vD 2mo ago
  > That sounds like a person resigned to his death. Well, yes, precisely. Just two verses earlier Samson prayed to God, asking to grant him a last bout of strength to take revenge at the Philistines for blinding him: "And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes."
schoen 2mo ago
My Hebrew education didn't extend to the future tense, but according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation תָּמוּת is either second person masculine future, or third person feminine future. But according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9 נֶפֶשׁ is feminine. So it seems that only the third person form could agree with the subject noun, right?
- Joker_vD 2mo ago
  Apparently, that's how Biblical Hebrew expressed the jussive. German uses 3rd person subjunctive ("Meine Seele sterbe mit den Philistern"), Polish (and other Slavic languages, I imagine) also uses 3rd person future but with explicit "let" thrown in: "Niech umrze dusza moja z Filistynami". But those are the older translations — those quotes are from Luther Bible (1534) and Gdansk Bible (1632); you can find newer translations that use the wording of "let me perish with the Philistines" variety as well.

m463 2mo ago

That sounds like a person resigned to his death. The other line sounds like a plea to others. I can't help but wonder about LLM translations... will they do it better or worse or just different? I can wonder if it might be with less bias, or with a better body to pull from, but I can see it can be slop too.

Joker_vD 2mo ago
> That sounds like a person resigned to his death. Well, yes, precisely. Just two verses earlier Samson prayed to God, asking to grant him a last bout of strength to take revenge at the Philistines for blinding him: "And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes."

schoen 2mo ago

My Hebrew education didn't extend to the future tense, but according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation תָּמוּת is either second person masculine future, or third person feminine future. But according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9 נֶפֶשׁ is feminine. So it seems that only the third person form could agree with the subject noun, right?

Joker_vD 2mo ago
Apparently, that's how Biblical Hebrew expressed the jussive. German uses 3rd person subjunctive ("Meine Seele sterbe mit den Philistern"), Polish (and other Slavic languages, I imagine) also uses 3rd person future but with explicit "let" thrown in: "Niech umrze dusza moja z Filistynami". But those are the older translations — those quotes are from Luther Bible (1534) and Gdansk Bible (1632); you can find newer translations that use the wording of "let me perish with the Philistines" variety as well.