One of the many temptations in the high science fine art guess work of identifying intertextuality between ancient literatures involves cognate words. But cognate words seldom have the exact semantic range and occasionally they don’t even have obvious overlapping semantic ranges.
I’ve been worrying about this problem for a while with regard to Akkadian damqu and ṭābu and which, if either, is closer to Hebrew טֹוב. Even when written ideographically damqu and ṭābu are distinguished in Akkadian. Quite obviously, טֹוב and ṭābu are cognates and טֹוב and damqu are not. Damqu and ṭābu are used in parallel constructions in a few texts and at least one lexical series equates them (A I/4 C:24ff, for those keeping score at home, see CAD Ṭ, 19). Damqu and ṭābu also often show nuanced differences in meaning in various contexts. But even if the translator settles on something else, “good” is a reasonable first order English gloss for both of these Akkadian words. So my question is, under what conditions might טֹוב gloss damqu? I have the same question about lemuttu on the one hand and רָע on the other. I’m almost certain that there is some literature on this but my first efforts haven’t turned up anything beyond mere equations. I will continue to look.
Yes, I do have specific Hebrew and Akkadian texts in mind and there are other markers that lead me to think there is some sort of intertextuality involved. At the end of the day, it will be their specific, if differing, contexts that determine how I understand the words within them and their relationship. But the meaning of a word in context is surely related to something about that word.