376 E.D. Reymond Levine’s discussion of the word is part of a more general treatment of the roots associated with it in Biblical Hebrew and in other cognate languages like Ugaritic, Akkadian, and the Semitic dialect of Ebla where a root with the consonants d-m-m occurs with the meaning “to mourn”. His study demonstrates beyond any doubt that a similar root existed in Biblical Hebrew; he concludes that there are two basic homonymous roots in Biblical Hebrew: d-m-m I (which is realized in the Masoretic vocalization as d-m-m, d-w-m, or d-m-y) and d-m-m II. The root d-m-m I represents cessation and the total absence of motion and sound (and perhaps also ruin and destruction), while d-m-m II represents mourning, moaning, and, by extension, other “sounds which are reminiscent of mourning” (4). He argues that “the notion of ‘mourning, moaning’ [associated with d-m-m II] is differentiated in biblical usage from ‘stillness, silence, cessation’ [associated with d-m- m I] and that it operates in different contexts”(5). Part of Levine’s approach is to assume that the root d-m-m I does not represent muttering or speaking in a low voice, but rather total silence and stillness. This logical position then leads him to question the derivation of any word which has, in the past, been derived from d- m-m I and which also occurs in the context of speech or sound. He discusses this first in relation to Ezek 24,16-23 and especially the phrase at the beginning of verse 17: hç[tAal lba μytm μd qnah Levine notes that if d-m-m I only denotes the total absence of sound and motion, then the translation offered by the NJPS “moan softly” for μd qnah “produces an oxymoron” (6). A similar problem (4) LEVINE, “Phenomenology of Mourning”, 106. This neat and straight- forward etymology seems more appealing than the greatly more complicated etymologies made by past scholars like DRIVER (“A Confused Hebrew Root”, 11*), who proposed four separate roots, and a total of seven separate verbs derived from these. Levine’s study proposes to find the root d-m-m II (“to mourn, moan”) in various passages, including Lev 10,3; Isa 23,2; Ezek 24,17; Amos 5,13; Ps 4,5; Lam 2,10. (5) LEVINE, “Phenomenology of Mourning”, 91. He also writes that “stillness and silence, on the one hand, and moaning and similar sounds, on the other, are indeed distinguished from each other in Biblical Hebrew (ibid.). (6) A similar problem would, it seems, adhere to the translation of the NIB (“groan quietly”), NAB (“groan in silence”) and the NJB (“groan in silence”). By “oxymoron”, I believe, LEVINE, “Phenomenology of Mourning”, 10, means a non- sensical phrase, not a rhetorical flourish. Levine writes that if one were to understand μd here as from d-m-m I “[o]ne would have to translate: ‘Moan in