right. For, notwithstanding the assurance of Ewald, §277b, למואל מלך, nevertheless, as it would be here used, remains an impossibility. Certainly under circumstances an indeterminate apposition can follow a proper name. That on coins we read מתתיה כהן גדול or נרון קיסר is nothing strange; in this case we also use the words “Nero, emperor,” and that we altogether omit the article shows that the case is singular: the apposition wavers between the force of a generic and of a proper name. A similar case is the naming of the proper name with the general specification of the class to which this or that one bearing the name belongs in lists of persons, as e.g., 1Ki 4:2-6, or in such expressions as, e.g., “Damascus, a town,” or “Tel Hum, a castle,” and the like; here we have the indefinite article, because the apposition is a simple declaration of the class.[1]
But would the expression, “The poem of Oscar, a king,” be proper as the title of a book? Proportionally more so than “Oscar, king;” but also that form of indeterminate apposition is contrary to the usus loq., especially with a king with whom the apposition is not a generic name, but a name of honour. We assume that “Lemuel” is a symbolical name, like “Jareb” in “King Jareb,” Hos 5:13; Hos 10:6; so we would expect the phrase to be מלך למואל(ה) rather than למואל מלך. The phrase “Lemuel, king,” here in the title of this section of the book, sounds like a double name, after the manner of עבר מלך in the book of Jeremiah. In the Greek version also the phrase Λεμουέλου βασιλέως (Venet.) is not used as syntactically correct without having joined to the βασιλέως a dependent genitive such as τῶν Αράβων, while none of the old translators, except Jerome, take the words למואל מלך together in the sense of Lamuelis regis. Thus מלך משּׂא are to be taken together, with Hitzig, Bertheau, Zöckler, Mühlau, and Dächsel, against Ewald and Kamphausen; משׂא, whether it be a name of a tribe or a country, or of both
- ↑ Thus it is also with the examples of indeterminate gentilicia, which Riehm makes valid for למואל מלך (for he translates למואל symbolically, which, however, syntactically makes no difference): “As analogous to 'Lemuel, a king,' one may adduce 'Jeroboam, son of Nebat, an Ephrathite,' 1Ki 11:26, instead of the usual form 'the Ephrathite;'” and בן־ימיני, Psa 7:1, for בן הימיני; on the contrary, כהן, 1Ki 4:5, does not belong to the subject, but is the pred.
