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# Lip̄nē 'in the face of': A Locative Preposition with a Threatening Connotation

**Authors:** [Camil Staps](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/camil-staps/) · **Year:** 2022 · **Venue:** Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 22, article 1 **Link:** [doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

[**0** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W4295367028) openalex · 2026-10-18[Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 22](https://openalex.org/S2764683527)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582)
- [PDF](https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/download/29582/21625)
- [DOI 10.5508/jhs29582](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4295367028)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Camil Staps](https://openalex.org/A5031376425) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1164-6838) · h 2 · 13 citations · 20 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The complex preposition לִפְנֵי (lə + construct of פָּנִים "face") marks the third argument of נגף "defeat" ("Israel was defeated lip̄nē the Philistines", 1 Sam 4:2). Recent translations render it as an agent marker "by"; the author argues it stays locative, with a pragmatic connotation of threat, best put as "in the face of". Evidence: "face" expressions across languages and in Hebrew (מִפְּנֵי with fear and flight, עָמַד לִפְנֵי "serve") mark a dominant or threatening party; battle accounts follow a fixed seven-stage script (gather, move, prepare, fight, settle, final blow, aftermath) in which God, not the enemy army, is the agent of נגף; in all 48 uses of נגף the active-voice agent is almost always God and לִפְנֵי never marks God; לִפְנֵי also occurs with active נגף where the agent slot is already filled; and grammaticalisation theory predicts an agent marker would not be restricted to one verb. Older English "before" carried the same sense.

## Ideas

- I1. Do not attach לִפְנֵי/מִפְּנֵי as `obl:agent` in the trees; keep `obl` with a locative role, and with niphal of נגף/כנע mark the agent as unexpressed (God), not the לִפְנֵי phrase. Count how the converter currently labels these.
- I2. A pragmatic feature "threat/dominance" on מִפְּנֵי (fear, flight) and on עָמַד לִפְנֵי (service before a superior): the complement is the stronger party. A `prag` rule that sets an evaluation or power relation between participants in the world.
- I3. The seven-stage battle script (verbs per stage: אסף/יעד, עלה, חנה/ערך, לחם, לכד/נתן בְּיַד, נכה, then flight/pursuit) as a frame for the world reader: stages arrive in fixed order, missing ones are inferred. Test on Torah battles (Num 21, 31; Gen 14; Ex 17).
- I4. Dictionary: give לִפְנֵי the senses "before (place, time)", "in the service of", "in the face of (a threat)", chosen by the governing verb.

## For Mova

I1 is a head/relation rule in `tools/macula` (`13-mova-tools.md`, the relations section, and `08-syntax.md` on prepositions and the passive). I2 is a candidate rule for `tools/macula/src/prag.rs`. I3 goes to `09-discourse.md` (genres, narrative scripts) and to the world reader as an event frame. I4 is an entry fix in `macula dict` and `05-pronouns-particles.md` (prepositions).

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.5508/jhs29582](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582)

```
@article{staps2022lip,
  title = {{Lip̄nē 'in the face of': A Locative Preposition with a Threatening Connotation}},
  author = {Staps, Camil},
  journal = {Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 22},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.5508/jhs29582},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs29582}
}
```

- [← previous Introducing BEREL: BERT Embeddings for Rabbinic-Encoded Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2022-shmidman-introducing-berel-bert-embeddings-rabbinic/)
- [next → Statistics on text demarcations and language learners driven by a database of the Hebrew Bible](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2022-winther-nielsen-statistics-text-demarcations-language-learners/)
- [↑ back to Ancient Hebrew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo/)

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