some progress (Hebrew)

[cellio]

I'm reading torah in a couple weeks, so last week I started looking at the portion I'm doing. I was able to translate most of it without aid. That was a pleasant surprise (though it's also not a hard passage). There were a few verbs I didn't know (like "strip"), for which I do not feel in the least bad.

I noticed an unusual construction in this portion (Chukat, chamishi), and I wonder what it means. (I haven't gone looking for commentaries yet.) Generally in biblical Hebrew double-noun constructions (which probably have a formal grammatical name) are "noun [implied "of"] noun", like "b'nei Yisrael" = "children of Israel". Har Sinai (har = mountain) is where we received torah. The beit t'filah is the house (beit) of prayer (t'filah). And so on. So I was a little surprised to see the phrase "hor ha-har" (= Mount Hor, but literally Hor the mountain) used consistently in this passage. "Har Hor" might sound a little funny, but is it grammatically unsound in some way I don't understand? Is this kind of stylistic variation really all over the place but I'm only now noticing it?

Comments

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

I googled "hor ha-har" just to see. Most of the hits indicate that the mountain has some kind of double peak and has been called "The mount(ain) on top of the mountain." I can't tell if the name preceeded the description or vice versa.

The visual depicted of Aaron's death and burial seems particularly poetic to me, lending creedence to "Har Hor" sounding funny and also not seeming mythically powerful. Not "majestic" if you can pardon the pun.