Biblical Hebrew Forum

[a.c.smith AT juno.com (Andrew C Smith)]

The confusion between "your" [sing.] and "your" [plur.] does seem mostly
confined to Deuteronomy:

Exod 16:12 [plur.]
Exod 20:2 [sing.]

Exod 23:19 [sing.]
Exod 23:25 [plur.]

Psal 81:10 [sing.] (where one expects a plural)

Zech 6:14 [plur.] (where one expects a singular)

Leviticus uses the plural throughout, as does Numbers.

The prophets tend to use the singular, addressing the nation personified
as "Jacob" or "house of Israel" or symbolized as "Zion", etc.

Yet I still urge that even if we accept the documentary hypothesis, that
doesn't fully explain this situation.

[1] would the editors have pieced together such small fragments, often
less than a sentence? would they not more likely have welded larger
pieces of text, like whole paragraphs?

[2] would not the editors have standardized the text as they edited it?

The problem becomes more complex if we view all material related to the
2nd person (verb conjugations, possive endings, direct object suffixes on
verbs, pronoun suffixes on prepositions, etc.). There there is still
greater variation between sing. and plur., often within a single
sentence.

See Deut 4:3 "your eyes ... the Lord your God ... in the midst of you"

a.c.smith AT juno.com

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