According to Wikisource, Song of Solomon 7:12 reads:
Mane surgamus ad vineas videamus si floruit vinea si flores fructus parturiunt si floruerunt mala punica ibi dabo tibi ubera mea.
The English translation provided there reads:
“Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.”
My question is, in the Latin version, what does the specific phrase ibi dabo tibi mean?
Thanks!
I’m not an expert on Latin by any means, but I’m pretty good with translations in general when I have a dictionary in front of me.
Dabo means “I shall give”, tibi means “to you” and ibi means “there.” So I’d surmise it refers to the part “there will I give thee.”
Since it was originally in Hebrew, it might be interesting to know what the verse might be in Hebrew, and hos it translates from the original.
NETA: Note that when I say “translate”, I mean for the purposes of singing a text. If you’re singing something in Latin, it helps to know what the heck you are saying.
On preview: I agree with Polycarp. There’s this message board called b-hebrew that I used to read the archives of, and I was surprised at how often you could translate something could be translated in a way slightly different from the tradition.
BigT is right about the translation you asked for.
Incidentally, it’s - euphemistic - at best to translate ‘ubera’ as ‘loves’. It means, literally, ‘breasts’, or figuratively, ‘abundance’.
I think they had that phrase in “GOod Morning Starshine.”
Do you mean 7:12, or 7:13? The meaning you give is 7:13 in my (Jewish) Bible. There’s a Hebrew-English version here. I disagree with that translation; the word it translates as ‘love’ should definitely be plural, as it is in yours. (In Hebrew, it’s ‘dodai,’ while the singular ‘love’ would be ‘dodi.’)
The Hebrew of the specific phrase that you’re asking about (based on the above translation into English, as I don’t speak Latin) is ‘sham etain et dodai lach,’ or ‘there I will give my loves to you.’ (My translation is an attempt to keep the word order of the Hebrew, which I don’t think is so (or possible) in the Latin.)
Wikisource and Biblegateway.com both have it as 7:12.
You can use pretty much any word order you like in Latin. It might look a bit odd, or have a different emphasis, but it wouldn’t be incorrect. So far as I know, the only restriction is that adjectives (and adverbs) have to be next to the word they’re modifying, but I imagine that’s probably universal.
I’m not sure that’s completely true, not in poetry anyway. For example, in just the first few lines of The Aeneid:
arma virumque cano Trojae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit
litora multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
vi superum…
Lavina is an adjecive that modifies litora. Also, multum acts as an abverb here and modifies jactatus.
Adjectives and adverbs do not have to be directly next to the word they modify, especially in poetry. In prose, they normally are, or are separated to emphasise something specific.
GilaB, can ‘dodai’ mean ‘breasts’?
Often does,
(ETA – this part is wrong, I just hate deleting stuff after I posted it)[del]but at this point it’s the man who is speaking, so I think this explanation if off the table in this particular case…
Realistically, I read it as a euphemism for “the whole nine yards, er I mean inches…” ;)[/del])
ETA (and I should probably delete the part above) actually, the roles have switched around verse 11, so yeah, she’s really talking about “letting him have at her breasts…”