This similarity, which is also evident in its idioms, metaphors, parallelisms, etc., was noted by various scholars as early as the 1930's and '40's. These references, which apply not only to unique words, indicate the difficulties the commentators encountered in etymological and semantic clarification of various biblical words. The discovery of Ugaritic, and especially of its affinity to biblical Hebrew, opened the way to explaining enigmatic passages in the Bible in the light of a sister tongue to biblical Hebrew, a tongue that was not known to our classical commentators. Needless to say, a new understanding of the meaning of a word, in any text whatsoever, can shed fresh light on the entire text and its ramifications. These new insights have redoubled importance when it comes to enhancing our understanding of our holy writ.
Biblical poetry abounds in archaic linguistic forms.
The suggested interpretations presented below are based primarily on the conclusions and innovative ideas of my mentor, the late Professor Shelomo Morag. Tzur occurs dozens of times in the Bible in the sense of a large rock or boulder, and hence figuratively also in the sense of a fortress or place of shelter, and once with the meaning of tzor , a flint stone or hard rock. The language in the poem, representing an ancient stratum of the language, reflects the original meaning of tzur as a hill or mountain. The comparison with Ugaritic substantiates this possibility. The syntactical status of the verb darakh is somewhat peculiar.