The lexicology of de 得
And Judah said to his brethren, ‘What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?’ (Genesis 37:26)
In ancient China, cowrie shells were used as currency, in a similar way to how they were used in pre-colonial Africa and in southern India. It is also similar to how wampum (derived from quahog shells) was adopted as currency by the woodland nations of northeastern Turtle Island after the arrival of European colonists. Cowrie shells were pleasing to the eye—this made them a suitable medium for representing value. They were discrete and indivisible, which made them a suitable tool for measuring value. They were relatively lightweight and portable, which allowed them to serve as a medium of exchange. And because they did not naturally decay, they retained their value, they could be borrowed or lent for significant periods of time, and they could be used to calculate interest. More importantly, they were recognised in their use as currency by the people and by the authorities. The question of shell-money in antiquity was an important topic of discourse by the Current Script Texts philologist and Ritual scholar Huan Kuan 桓寬 in the Salt and Iron Discourses or Yantielun 《鹽鐵論》. This document was notable in its opposition to monopolies on commodity money, and its insistence that money could take various forms… as long as it was backed by the force of law.
For those of you who’ve been following my writing for a minute: you thought I was going to start talking about greenbacks, American populism, post-Keynesianism and modern monetary theory again there for a second, didn’t you? Admit it! And I agree, this is still a hobby-horse of mine. It’s Patristic: Baron John Maynard Keynes didn’t exist yet, obviously, but Saint John Chrysostom was very much a fiat-money guy. Check it out, it’s in his homilies. But I don’t know if I can make the case yet that it’s Biblical. Perhaps I should do a careful lexicography of the Joseph cycle in Genesis to see if that’s the case… without, of course, making any judgements beforehand.
But shell-money is actually an important point for lexicographical studies in Chinese. The pictographic element bei 貝 (simplified 贝) ‘cowrie’, is a prominent element in many syssemantographs and phono-semantic glyphs which relate to money or wealth: cai 財 ‘wealth’; gong 貢 ‘gift, tribute’; huo 貨 ‘goods, property’; zi 資 ‘expense, fee, cost, investment, fund, capital’; xian 賢 ‘virtuous, good, clever, wise’—originally ‘worthy, capable’ in the sense of ‘worth paying’; pin 貧 ‘poor’; gui 貴 ‘costly, high-quality, noble’; ze 責 ‘duty, responsibility, blame’—originally ‘tax, debt’; ji 齎 ‘to present, to offer’; lin 賃 ‘wages’; qiu 賕 ‘bribe’; shang 賞 ‘reward’; and de 得 ‘to acquire’. (‘Acquire, Brak! Acquire!’)
The character de 得, in its ancient oracle-bone and Shang bronze form 㝵, represents a hand (you 又) reaching out to take a cowrie shell (bei 貝). In the Zhou era, the chi 彳 radical was added, representing xing 行 (‘crossroads, to walk, to go, to move’). Xu Shen, in the Shuowen jiezi, classifies this character as a phono-semantic glyph derived from xing 行, explaining the derivation as 行有所得也, which can be interpreted as ‘Each action [movement] has its profitability’, or else as ‘There will be [people] acquiring at every crossroads’—crossroads, particularly in front of city gates, being (along with riverfronts) the usual and natural places for trade and mercantile business in antiquity.
In modern Chinese, de 得 is actually the 39th most-common written character. And that’s in no small part owing to its function as an adverbial prefix or as an adjectival suffix particle! If you want to say ‘two tigers running quickly’ in Chinese, it’s liang zhi laohu pao de kuai 两只老虎跑得快, where the descriptor being modified is kuai 快 ‘quick’. (This also happens to be a Chinese toddler’s nursery-rhyme, sung to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’.) It can also be used on its own, or in the compounds dedao 得到, qude 取得 or huode 获得 as ‘to get, to acquire’. And it is also used in numerous compounds: juede 觉得 ‘to believe, to think, to have the opinion’; jide 记得 ‘to remember’; zhide 值得 ‘to be worth (it)’; yingde 赢得 ‘to win (something)’; bude 不得 ‘mustn’t’ and the double-negative budebu 不得不 ‘cannot help but’; xiande 显得 ‘to seem, to appear’; dongde 懂得 ‘to understand, to “get it”’; and dele 得了 ‘enough! that’s it! that’s all!’.
It’s worth note that the lexeme de 得 didn’t have anywhere close to the kind of flexible range and ubiquity that it does in modern Chinese. (I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise, given how profit-oriented Chinese society became, especially during its Middle Ages.) Obviously, it had the function in Classical Chinese of ‘to obtain’ or ‘to get’: 焉得諼草、言樹之背。 ‘How shall I get the plant of forgetfulness? I would plant it on the north of my house.’ (Odes 《詩經》, Odes of Wei 衛風, ‘My Noble Husband’ 伯兮 4—note that in modern Chinese, xuancao 諼草 or 萱草 refers to the tiger daylily; in Chinese culture daylilies are associated with letting go of the past or forgetting one’s cares) Or: 厥既得卜，則經營。 ‘Having obtained favourable indications, he set about laying out the plan (of the city).’ (Documents 《尚書》, ‘Announcement of the Duke of Shao’ 召誥 2) More specifically, it can mean ‘to seize, to grab’, or in some instances ‘to plunder’: 周公居東二年，則罪人斯得。 ‘The Duke of Zhou resided (accordingly) in the east for two years, when the criminals were taken (and brought to justice).’ (Documents, Book of Zhou 周書, ‘Metal-Bound Coffer’ 金滕 2) And in certain cases it can be used to indicate ‘greed’ or ‘covetousness’: 及其老也，血氣既衰，戒之在得。 ‘When he is old, and the animal powers are decayed, he guards against covetousness.’ (Analects 《論語》 16.7)
De 得 can also be used as ‘can, possible, permissible’, though in this function it is usually found negated, as bude 不得: 若不得謝，則必賜之几杖。 ‘If he be not allowed to resign, there must be given him a stool and staff.’ (Rites 《禮記》 1.13) It can also be used as ‘to succeed’: 孔子既得合葬於防 ‘When Confucius had succeeded in burying (his mother) in the same grave (with his father) at Fang…’ (Rites 3.6) Or it can be used as ‘meet, right, fitting, satisfactory, pleasing’: 禮得其報則樂，樂得其反則安。 ‘When ceremonies are responded to, there arises pleasure; and when music is accompanied with the right introspection, there arises the (feeling of) repose.’ (Rites 19.46).
And finally, in later Classical-era and post-Classical texts, de 得 occasionally appears as a corrupted version of de 德 ‘propensity, virtue, morality, to repay kindness’. 為宮室之美、妻妾之奉、所識窮乏者得我與？ ‘When he takes them, is it not that he may obtain beautiful mansions, that he may secure the services of wives and concubines, or that the poor and needy of his acquaintance may be helped by him?’ (Mencius 《孟子》 11.10)
So, even though its range is narrower in Classical Chinese than in modern Chinese, it still has a broad array of functions: ‘get, obtain, allow, succeed’ and so on. Most of these functions are neutral in connotation. But when Confucius inveighs against cupidity and desire for gain at others’ expense, the term clearly takes on a negative connotation. This is how the Semitic root b-ṣ-‘ ב-צ-ע also operates.
In the Arabic of the noble Qur’ān, the collective noun biḍā‘at بضاعة can refer to ‘merchandise, goods, items for sale’; this occurs alongside a singular noun biḍ‘a بضع ‘several, few’—in both instances referring to a finite length of time, ‘some years’. But the original function of this root b-ḍ-‘ that links these two instances together appears to be reflected in the modern Levantine Arabic baiḍ‘ah بضعة ‘a piece (of something)’. That would appear to refer to something that has been cut off and taken from its source.
It is interesting that both in the Tanakh and in the Qur’ān, this same root occurs… in connexion with Joseph as a prisoner! In the Qur’ān, Satan makes the cupbearer released from prison forget to mention Joseph to Pharaoh, so Joseph kept languishing in prison for ‘several years’ (biḍ‘a sinayn بضع سنين). But before that, in the Tanakh, Judah argues thus for selling his little brother into slavery in Egypt in the first place: מה־בּצע כּי נהרג את־אחינוּ וכסּינוּ את־דּמו (Mâ-beṣa‘ kî naharōg ’et-’āḥînû wǝkissînû ’et-dāmô? ‘What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood?’)
The implication in both cases is that Joseph is cut off, broken off, taken by force and sold for gain, as merchandise. The word itself would appear to connote something neutral in both cases. But it functions as a witness in the first Tanakhic instance against Judah, who cuts off Joseph from Jacob and sells him for profit; and in the second Qur’ānic instance against Pharaoh’s cupbearer, who forgets the one who profited him and leaves him cut off in prison.
Intriguingly, the same root b-ṣ-‘ ב-צ-ע or b-ḍ-‘ ب ض ع can be used, like de 得, in a function of ‘to succeed, to complete, to fulfil’… but it seems as though the trajectory it takes to get there is slightly different. De 得, not having the initial function of ‘to cut off, to break off’, receives the connotation of ‘success’ directly from its association with ‘getting’ or ‘obtaining’ or ‘winning’. The mechanism whereby b-ṣ-‘ attains this connotation appears to be from its original function of ‘to cut off’ or ‘to break off’:
עשׂה יהוה אשׁר זמם בּצּע אמרתו אשׁר צוּה מימי־קדם הרס ולא חמל וישׂמּח עליך אויב הרים קרן צריך׃
The LORD has done what he purposed, has carried out his threat; as he ordained long ago, he has demolished without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you, and exalted the might of your foes. (Lam 2:17)
The original Hebrew biṣṣa‘ ’imrātū בּצּע אמרתו, which the RSV translates as ‘carried out his threat’, carries the sense (actually fairly well-preserved in this translation) of his having ‘accomplished what he said he would’ or having ‘fulfilled his word’. He has cut off—and here the Qur’ānic Arabic sense of a finite length of time is relevant—the duration of the promise, with its fulfilment.
Again it is worth returning to the tale of Joseph. Joseph’s brothers, and Pharaoh’s cupbearer, both profited off of Joseph and cut him off. Yet in the end, Joseph is preserved. In being given Asheneit (the daughter of the chief priest of Heliopolis), as his wife, he is exalted above the Pharaoh’s cupbearer. And in being given official rank under Pharaoh, he is placed in a position of power over his brothers when they come to him pleading for food during a famine. And notice how Joseph uses the steward, which may indeed be the same cupbearer whom he freed (he serves the same function in the household), in order to devise the scheme against his brothers involving Benjamin (Gen 43:16-44:2)! The cupbearer serves Joseph and not Pharaoh. In each case he is given the upper hand over those who had cut him off.
This is an important teaching of Scripture.
בּגאות רשׁע ידלק עני יתּפשׂוּ בּמזמּות זוּ חשׁבוּ׃
כּי־הלּל רשׁע על־תּאות נפשׁו וּבצע בּרך נאץ יהוה׃
רשׁע כּגבהּ אפּו בּל־ידרשׁ אין אלהים כּל־מזמּותיו׃In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes which they have devised. For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart, and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD. In the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’ (Ps 9:23-25)
In Scripture, God is with Joseph—meaning that Joseph is the one whom God makes to stand out or arise above his foes. Those who cut Joseph off for their own profit, are in the end made prostrate before him. So it is with those who seek profit by cutting off or by exploiting their neighbour. Because, just as God lifted Joseph up over his brothers in the midst of the famine, so too will He lift them up against their oppressors and exploiters on That Day. All glory be to Him Who vindicated Joseph, and Who appointed for him the double portion in his father’s inheritance.
