parshat Noach: Parsing Tzadik Tamim -- Video

The last one was also a video, but I forgot to mention it in the title. There are teo or three different ways of parsing the first pasuk in parashat Noach: {Bereishit 6:9}:

ט אֵלֶּה, תּוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ--נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה, בְּדֹרֹתָיו: אֶת-הָאֱלֹהִים, הִתְהַלֶּךְ-נֹחַ.

9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted; Noah walked with God.

It is ish tzaddik tamim - a wholly righteous man; or is it noach ish tzaddik + also tamim hayah; also, does bedorotav distribute over the nearest phrase or across both phrases. I discuss the midrashic parse, the Targumic one, that of Rashi, Ramban, and Ibn Ezra. All on the video:



Comments welcome on this and previous video posts. I'll see if I can respond to them in videos as well!

Update: I was a bit off in my trup-based analysis in the video. Specifically, if we consider:
נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה, בְּדֹרֹתָיו

it does indeed split off initially into
נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה
בְּדֹרֹתָיו

but the next thing to split off is נֹחַ, since the revii on נֹחַ is a disjunctive accent on a clause ending in tipcha. Thus, we have:
נֹחַ
אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה

which would seem at this point to still be acceptable as "a wholly righteous man" as per Rashi. Thus, Noach would also seem to be distributive, a point I did not make in the video.

At this point, we get the tevir on tzaddiq, which gives us:
אִישׁ צַדִּיק
תָּמִים הָיָה

Which would seem to give us definitively the Ibn Ezra/Targum Yonatan rendition of two separate nouns. Indeed, from the trup perspective, we should have the tevir on the word before haya - as Wickes indeed states in general. On the other hand, Wickes does mention that with a series of nouns in status constructus, one may find disjunctive accents therein -- but his examples don't show that this is true over and above the previous requirement of disjunctive accents - I would think it does not. But if it did, it could preserve as Rashi-oriented analysis.

All in all, I would say that the trup is in accordance with the JPS translation, as I stated in the video, just even more so.