Biblical Hebrew Forum

[ianyoung AT plato.arts.usyd.edu.au]

On Wed, 02 Dec 1998 14:50:13 +0000 lehmann AT mail.Uni-Mainz.de (Reinhard
G.Lehmann) wrote:

>Henry Churchyard wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone have any ideas on the 2nd.fem.sg. ending, as attached to
>> plural nouns, -aykhi (Gesenius-Kautzsch p. 258)?  Iknow that the
>> 2nd.fem.sg suffix in general was originally -kii, but original -ay-
>> usually monophthongizes in oenvironements like this...  Also, this
>> ending only appears in two passages where the fem.sg. "you" being
>> addressed is the soul.
>>
>>        Psalms 103:3     l AT khol-tah.a~luu'aaykhii
>>        Psalms 103:3               `a~woonaaykhii (some manuscripts)
>>        Psalms 103:4                 h.ayyaaykhii
>>        Psalms 103:5                n@`uuraaykhii
>>        Psalms 116:7              limnuuh.aaykhii
>>        Psalms 116:7                  `aalaaykhii
>
>As proposed by Gary Rendsburgh, these endings 2fsg aaykhiiseem to be
>dialectal:
>
>The old (proto-)semitic form isretained in 2 K 4:2 Kt 4:3 Kt 4:7 Kt (2x)
>Jer 11:15 Ps 103:3 (2x) 103:4 (2x) 103:5 116:7 (2x) 116:19 119:9 137:6
>Ctc 2:13 Kt. Since that form occures also in Aramaic, at first glance
>it seems to be regional variation, possibly as a phneomenon of language
>contact. Four items are in the mouth of the northern prophet Elisha,
>eight are in Ps 103 und Ps 116, which also contain other northernisms.
>Also Canticles, for other linguistic reasons, can be localized to the
>north. So 13 from the total of 16 ocurences of this form are in texts
>containing also other forms of Israeli (i.e. northern) Hebrew.
>
>For more detailed information look at:
>
>Rendsburg, Gary A., Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of
>Selected Psalms, Atlanta 1990 (SBL Monograph Series 43).
>Rendsburg, Gary A., The Strata of Biblical Hebrew: JNWSL 17 (1991)
>81-99.
>Rendsburg, Gary A., Morphological Evidence for Regional Dialects in
>Ancient Hebrew, in: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, ed. Walter R.
>Bodine, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns 1992, 65-88.
>
>sincerely
>reinhard g.lehmann
>
>       *****************************************
>       Reinhard G. Lehmann
>       Lect. for Classical Hebrew and Aramaic
>       Johannes-Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
>       D - 55099 Mainz
>       tel: +49 - 6131 - 39 3284
>       mailto:lehmann AT mail.uni-mainz.de
>       look at http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/link.html
>       *****************************************
>

Another choice is that they are late Aramaisms in this psalm-
Avi Hurvitz, The Transition Period in Biblical Hebrew, Jerusalem, 1972
(Hebrew), p.116ff.  
Rendsburg seems to prefer 'late' to northern in this particular case, but
Reinhard is correct in pointing to Rendsburg's work for a comprehensive recent
discussion.

Ian Young
Semitic Studies
Sydney University
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