Sophiee1 wrote:
Rabbi Eli Cohen wrote:
On page 119 of The Return of The Kosher Pig, Tzahi Shapira writes:
"Daniel 7:13-14 speaks in the singular structure as it uses the word אתה ( "You" singular) and not אתם ( "You" plural)."
What an incredible error of translation!!! He translates the Aramaic word “Asei” (see strong's concordance H858) which means “come”, as if it were the Hebrew word; "Atah" “you”.


While Cohen is undeniably correct that no part of Daniyyél 7:13-14 is written in the second person and the two verses certainly never use a second person nominative pronoun “you”—singular OR plural—I should like to make two points about his criticism:
(1) The entirety of Daniyyél’s seventh chapter (along with with most of chapter 2 and the whole of chapters 3-6) aren’t written in Hebrew at all, but are entirely in Aramaic. Consequently, one never finds either אַתָּה attah or אַתֶּם attĕm (which are both Hebrew pronouns) anywhere in these chapters: the Aramaic equivalents are אַנְתְּ an't and אַתּוּן attŭn respectively: Daniyyél never uses the plural form at all, and he invariably spells the singular form anomalously with a superfluous "אַנְתְּה" whenever he uses it (four times in chapter 2, once in chapter 3, three times in chapter 4 and four times in chapter 5). The normal spelling of אַנְתְּ can be seen at Ĕzra 7:25.

(2) I am, however, at a loss to understand what Cohen is talking about when he refers to “the Aramaic word asei”: there is no such word in Daniyyél 7:13-14 and Strong’s number H858 corresponds to the verbal root
אתא; the form of it that occurs in Daniyyél 7:13 is the p'al participle אָתֵה atéh (“coming”) followed by the verb הֲוָא havah (“was”), so that the two words taken together mean “was coming”.

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