to act on the heart: to seize hold of someone's inner self, or to gain such an inner self where there was none
This is a verb built out of a noun. Hebrew usually works the other way round, but here the noun for the inner self, לֵב, came first and the verb was coined on top of it, much as English turned the noun "shelf" into the verb "to shelve". The plain everyday form of it is never used, and it survives in only three places. Each of them bends it in a different direction.
In Job 11:12 a hollow man "gets a heart", which is to say he acquires the sense he was empty of. Zophar means it as a sneer: it will happen about as often as a wild donkey is born human. The line is built on sound, since the word for "hollow" and the verb here ring against each other, and the joke is that an empty man staying empty is simply the way of things.
In Song of Songs 4:9 the man tells his bride, twice in one line, that she has done something to his heart with a single glance and a single bead of her necklace. What exactly she has done is one of the most argued questions in the book, and the translations divide three ways:
- "you have put heart into me", the way the oldest Greek translation read it, coining a verb from its own word for heart
- "you have made my heart beat faster", a description of what desire does to the body
- "you have stolen my heart away", where the verb strips the heart out instead of filling it, which is how most modern English versions take it
The poem may well be working all three at once. Whichever way it leans, the heart in view is not sentiment but the thinking, choosing self, so what a single look gives or takes is the man's composure and his command of himself.
Nuances
What the Piel of לבב does to the heart in Song of Songs 4:9. The form לִבַּבְתִּנִי is a hapax, and the three standard glosses each encode a different analysis of the Piel of a verb formed from the noun לֵב: factitive (the heart is made to do something), privative (the heart is removed, on the model of GKC §52h, compare דִּשֵּׁן "clear away the ashes" and חִטֵּא "de-sin"), and metonymical or delocutive (the object is made lion-hearted, emboldened). The ancient versions already disagree: the Septuagint coins ἐκαρδίωσας from καρδία, Symmachus is reported to render ἐθαρσύνας με, and the Vulgate has vulnerasti cor meum, the heart wounded rather than removed.
- majorityPrivative: the glance takes the heart, and with it the wits, clean away, hence "you have stolen my heart" or "you drive me crazy". This is the dominant modern reading, resting on the privative Piel of GKC §52h and on the capture-of-the-heart motif documented across ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian love poetry.; HALOT, s.v. לבב; GKC (Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley), Hebrew Grammar, §52h; Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (NICOT); J. Cheryl Exum, Song of Songs (Old Testament Library)
- minorityFactitive: the Piel makes the heart do something, namely race or pound, so the line describes the body's response to arousal, hence "you have made my heart beat faster".; Koehler-Baumgartner (KBL), s.v. לבב
- minorityMetonymical: the verb puts heart into its object, heartening or emboldening him, drawing on לֵב as the seat of courage. This is the oldest reading and the one the earliest translators understood.; BDB, s.v. לבב; Septuagint, Song of Songs 4:9 (ἐκαρδίωσας); Symmachus, Song of Songs 4:9 (ἐθαρσύνας με), as reported in the older commentary tradition
- minorityNot from לֵב at all: the form reflects a cognate of Akkadian lababu "to rage, be aroused to fury", giving "you have aroused me passionately". Most commentators judge the heart derivation likelier.; N. M. Waldman, "A Note on Canticles 4:9," Journal of Biblical Literature 89 (1970): 215-217
What the Niphal יִלָּבֵב means in Job 11:12, and whether the verse should be emended. Zophar's line וְאִישׁ נָבוּב יִלָּבֵב sets נָבוּב "hollow" beside יִלָּבֵב, and the consensus takes the Niphal as marking entry into a state: a hollow man will "get a heart", that is, gain sense. Akkadian libba rašû "to acquire heart" and Arabic labba "to be sensible" attest the same development of the root elsewhere in Semitic. The Septuagint renders the colon so differently that it offers no usable vote.
- majorityThe verb means "get a heart", that is, gain sense or understanding, and the sound play with נָבוּב should be kept rather than emended away.; BDB, s.v. לבב; HALOT, s.v. לבב; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary 17), 256-266; C. L. Seow, Job 1-21 (Illuminations)
- minorityThe Niphal here means the opposite, to lack heart or be senseless.; G. R. Driver, as reported in David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary 17), 256-266
- minorityThe text should be emended: either יִלָּבֵב to יִלָּמֵד "is taught, tamed" (reflected in the New American Bible), or פֶּרֶא "wild ass" to פֶּרֶד in the second colon. Neither emendation is necessary once the sarcasm is granted.; E. F. Sutcliffe, "Notes on Job, textual and exegetical," Biblica 30 (1949): 70-71