| 12. Linguistic Exegesis The line opens with yehi {יְהִי | yĕhî} ‘let it be’ governing the predicate raev {רָעֵב | rāʿēḇ} ‘hungry’, forming a jussive-style declaration that portrays an inevitable condition rather than a mere wish. The subject ono {אֹנוֹ | ʾōnô} ‘his strength’ is personified as if it can itself become hungry, a poetic image for the wasting away of vitality. The second clause is joined by veeyd {וְאֵיד | wəʾēḏ} ‘and disaster’, creating tight parallelism between inner depletion and outer threat. The participle nakhon {נָכוֹן | nāḵôn} ‘prepared’ depicts calamity as already positioned and poised, while the prepositional phrase letsal'o {לְצַלְעוֹ | ləṣalʿô} ‘at his side’ intensifies immediacy by locating the danger in close proximity. Some renderings shift the hunger imagery toward the calamity itself, but the surface syntax reads most naturally with “his strength” as the entity described as hungry, maintaining the verse’s metaphor of weakening before ruin. |