The lexicography of shei 誰
He said, ‘Who are you?’ And she answered, ‘I am Ruth, your maidservant.’ (Rut 3:8)
Along with duo 多 and shao 少, here is another first-year Chinese learner’s staple character. Shui 誰 (simplified 谁), or colloquially shei, carries the basic glosses of ‘who?’, ‘whom?’, ‘whose?’ and ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’ in a negative-rhetorical sense. (This last is as in: shei bu zhidao? 誰不知道? ‘who doesn’t know?’ = ‘everybody knows’.)
The character shei 誰 is listed in the Shuowen jiezi as a synonym of he 何 ‘who?’, ‘what?’, and in the Erya as belonging to the same family of characters as shu 孰 ‘what?’ ‘who?’ ‘which (one)?’ and chou 疇 (simplified 畴) ‘farmland’, ‘level plain’, ‘class’, ‘category’, ‘who’. Xu Shen’s etymology for shui appears to be uncontested. It consists of a yan 言 ‘word’, ‘speech’ as the semantic component, with a phonetic marker zhui 隹 ‘little bird’, ‘short-tailed bird’, ‘dove’.
Nowadays, shei 谁 is practically the only word in modern vernacular Mandarin that gets to serve this function… at least ‘straight’. When modern Chinese people use the word he 何 to mean ‘who’ or ‘what’, it’s either as part of a period drama or stage-play, or a kind of ironic or humorous affectation—sort of similar to how modern English speakers might affect a Shakespearean ‘thou’ or ‘dost’ or ‘doth’ for effect. I have literally never heard any Chinese speaker, whether in a period drama or otherwise, use shu 孰 or chou 畴 this way, and in fact, the first time I have even seen either of these two characters was in the Erya, as synonyms for shei. So, I’m happy to say that I learned something new today!
What is interesting about shei 誰 in the Chinese Classics is that, even though it is clear that the lexeme is interrogative in origin, it is still overwhelmingly used in rhetorical declarations. Examine carefully how it is used in the Book of Odes:
誰謂雀無角、何以穿我屋。
誰謂女無家、何以速我獄。
雖速我獄、室家不足。Who can say the sparrow has no horn?
How else could it bore through my house?
Who can say that you did not get me betrothed?
How else could you have urged on this trial?
But though you have forced me to trial,
Your ceremonies for betrothal were not sufficient.Book of Odes 《詩經》, Odes of Shao and the South 召南, ‘Road Dew’ 行露 2
Or the Book of Documents:
「誰敢不讓，敢不敬應？帝不時敷，同，日奏，罔功。」
‘Who will then dare not to cultivate a humble virtue? who will dare not to respond to you with reverence? If you, O Di, do not act thus, all (your ministers) together will daily proceed to a meritless character.’
Book of Documents 《尚書》, Book of Knavery 虞書, Yi and Ji益稷 3
Or these three examples from the Book of Changes, all of which are explicitly, unavoidably rhetorical:
初九：同人于門，无咎。
出門同人，又誰咎也。The first NINE, undivided, (shows the representative of) the union of men just issuing from his gate. There will be no error. ‘(The representative of) the union of men is just issuing from his gate:’ – who will blame him?
Book of Changes 《易經》, Tong Ren 同人 2
六三：負且乘，致寇至，貞吝。
負且乘，亦可醜也，自我致戎，又誰咎也。The third SIX, divided, shows a porter with his burden, (yet) riding in a carriage. He will (only) tempt robbers to attack him. However firm and correct he may (try to) be, there will be cause for regret. For ‘a porter with his burden to be riding in a carriage’ is a thing to be ashamed of. ‘It is he himself that tempts the robbers to come:’ – on whom besides can we lay the blame?
Book of Changes 《易經》, Jie 解 4
六三：不節若，則嗟若，无咎。
不節之嗟，又誰咎也。The third SIX, divided, shows its subject with no appearance of observing the (proper) regulations, in which case we shall see him lamenting. But there will be no one to blame (but himself). In ‘the lamentation for not observing the (proper) regulations,’ who should there be to blame?
Book of Changes 《易經》, Jie 節 4
Whom do these rhetorical usages of shei 誰, particularly the ones in the Book of Documents and the Book of Changes, remind one of? Oh, yes: the One God of Scripture. Especially when He begins answering His creatures, after they begin asking Him a lot of annoying, impertinent and arrogant philosophical and theological questions, in kind. As in Exodus:
ויּאמר יהוה אליו מי שׂם פּה לאדם או מי־ישׂוּם אלּם או חרשׁ או פקּח או עוּר הלא אנכי יהוה׃
Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’ (Ex 4:11)
Or as in the Book of Job:
איפה היית בּיסדי־ארץ הגּד אם־ידעתּ בינה׃
מי־שׂם ממדּיה כּי תדע או מי־נטה עליה קּו׃
על־מה אדניה הטבּעוּ או מי־ירה אבן פּנּתהּ׃
בּרן־יחד כּוכבי בקר ויּריעוּ כּל־בּני אלהים׃
ויּסך בּדלתים ים בּגיחו מרחם יצא׃‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb?’ (Job 38:4-8)
The wisdom-literary rhetorical use of shei 誰 mirrors the rhetorical use of mî מי in the Hebrew Torah and in the Kǝtubim, when the Lord refers to Himself in the face of a human being who is unworthily questioning Him. The overwhelmingly rhetorical usage of shei 誰 in the Classics is particularly interesting to me, because it suggests a certain division of labour between shei 誰 and the less rhetorically-charged he 何 (though notice that even he 何 can be used rhetorically—see how it is used above in ‘Road Dew’!), that was obviated later with the emergence of vernacular Chinese. Now it is obviously used in both functions; shei 誰 is used for sincere, genuine questions as well as for rhetorical declarations.
But there is no such division of labour in the Semitic languages, and it’s clear from the way that shei 誰 developed later that such a division isn’t really necessary. Obviously mî has a rhetorical-declarative function in Scripture, as we have just seen. But with equal clarity, we can see that is not its only function. Boaz really doesn’t know who the attractive young damsel sleeping at his feet on the threshing-floor is, and there is nothing to indicate from the text that the mî he uses to ask the lady’s name in Ruth 3:8 isn’t a sincere question.
Still, the division in function is fairly clear. Human beings are not as deep or complex as we imagine we are. Delusional, perhaps, and deceitful beyond all things (Jer 17:9)—but not particularly deep. There is no real need to elaborate the mî as Boaz applies it to Ruth. And the mî that the Lord applies to Himself—the shei 誰 of Hebrew Scripture—does not require a response from us. In fact, it’s the Scriptural equivalent of ‘Donny, please’. We are, as Walter Sobchak would say, out of our element when we venture into theodicy. We bicker, complain, question and judge far too much as it is—and is what we imagine to be God’s fault really God’s fault, or ours? The Book of Changes asks it quite bluntly: you shei jiu ye 又誰咎也 ‘on whom besides [ourselves] can we lay the blame?’ Is Israel’s genocide on Gaza and assault on Lebanon the fault of God, or the fault of people? How dare we ask for theodicies, anyway? How dare a clay jug ask the potter Who fashioned it for a differently-shaped handle? Who do we think we are?
