@PaulVargas Your meta post prompted me to finally download Mou for my Mac. A much better deal than composing on-site. Thanks! (I don’t exactly get the point of the question, but it was a helpful answer anyway.)

@Davïd Do you have any suggestions for Hebrew (bible) reading outside of the Pentateuch, with the primary criterion being easy? I've mostly stayed there because my sense (not sure from where) is that the vocab and ?syntax (or whatever else it is that matters) are simpler compared to most other parts of the HB. Not that I've run out of material (!), but I'm just curious what else I can try. (Slowly. With extensive consultation of a lexicon and various other less admirable forms of cheating.)

My understanding is that poetry is difficult, and prophecy I don't understand even in English, but there remain a lot of choices. (Bonus if there's a slavishly literal LXX to accompany it, since that's my favorite way to cheat without fully cheating. ;-) )

Can anybody think of an example of ἐκεῖ referring to something conceptual like this? (I don’t have a better idea about how to understand the Greek; I’m just having a hard time reading it like that.) αὐτοὶ δέ εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος παραβαίνων διαθήκην· ἐκεῖ κατεφρόνησέν μου.

@Susan ἐκεῖ is only locative so far as I'm aware. nxavar's argument sounds like an Anglicism to me.

Also, see the punctuation (or its lack) in Swete's edition = ...διαθήκην· ἐκεῖ κατεφρόνησέν μου 8 Γαλααδ, πόλις ἐργαζομένη μάταια,... = Brenton's "...a covenant: there the city Galaad despised me, working vanity,..."

Further, the example in that comment ("The problem is there") remains locative. Is the comment hinting towards an impersonal "there" ("There is a problem")? Which is a different construction of course.

You've probably already looked at what George Howard does in NETS: "7 But they are like a person transgressing a covenant; / there he despised me. // 8 Galaad is a city working vain things, / stirring up water. //"

My own effort in that Q&A attracted a DV, I see. Must have done something wrong... B-)

@Susan Beginning Hebrew courses in my circles usually translate the book of Ruth first, so I imagine it is an easier book (besides shorter, and can fit in a term). While I am familiar enough with Hebrew to work with it, I am no expert, and am not familiar enough to know of other books (nor have I researched it).

@Susan I'm sure that @ScottS is right about Ruth being included in early-stage Hebrew courses. It has some quirks, though. In the company of the Baylor Handbook would be a good read if you haven't already done it.

I think Jonah is easier, but pretty sure you'll have read that already. My sense is that Joshua and/or the prose of Jeremiah would be good "next steps". Very accessible Hebrew.

And I agree about the poetry being more difficult. Even "simple" poetry takes syntactic "liberties" in comparison with prose. Still, the opening chapters of Proverbs aren't too bad, in fact.

@Susan See also Ed Glenny's commentary on LXX Hosea who follows Swete's analysis of the text: ἐκεῖ goes with Γαλααδ. At least, in Vaticanus. ;)

@Davïd OK, thanks. I'm also not sure it makes sense to invoke (as he did, if I'm reading that correctly) the ‘superiority' of the LXX textual tradition over the MT, even if that's what you think. It's not as if we need to posit a different (older) Hebrew text used by the LXX translator there. (I suppose one could imagine one with איש, but that seems like a needlessly complicated explanation.) It’s an interpretive issue, and the LXX translator is free to be wrong (as far as I'm concerned).

@Davïd Right, I wasn’t sure what the antecedent (or postcedent) was in the NETS. I hadn’t seen the other punctuation and Brenton’s, though. That makes a lot of sense.

@ScottS That sounds like fun, thanks!

@Davïd You have some interesting ideas about things I know / have read. ;-) If you’ve told me to read/learn it (or even suggested it), I probably have. Otherwise, all bets are off. As far as Hebrew goes, that is. Anyway, Jonah sound like a good idea too. Thanks for your thoughts.

@Susan P.s. The LXX of Jeremiah is quite wooden, although it is considerably shorter than MT-Jer. Something similar also obtains with Joshua, although the textual relationship is a bit more complex than the (basically) longer/shorter issue with MT/LXX-Jer.

This answer barely acknowledges the actual definitions of 'et and we, and actually demonstrates a profound ignorance of Hebrew grammar. What happens if the OP prefers the answer that has inaccurate or misleading information?

@MarkEdward What happens? Not much I think. Efforts to remedy such situations have been repeatedly declined on meta.

(And sorry, as much as I agree with you, deleting them is just outside what I understand about my job description.)

(You can actually vote to delete if you'd like, though.)

No, of course I wouldn't expect you to bend the rules in order to get rid of it. It's just disappointing that a poor answer might be the accepted one.

@MarkEdward Agreed. Fortunately, the OP either doesn't know about her special make-this-one-go-on-top powers or has elected not to use them for some reason.