Biblical Hebrew Forum

[mjoseph <mjoseph AT terminal.cz>]

Paul Zellmer queried:

>I was momentarily confused when we started working on the first
>clause of Is 2:6:

>KiY Nf+a$:TTfH (aMM:Kf B"YT Ya(:aQoB

>We recognized the verb as qatal in a dependent clause with a
>second person masculine subject.  We also noted the feminine
>singular pronominal suffix.  It was this suffix that led to the
>confusion.

If I'm not mistaken, the qametz-he at the end of the word Nf+a$:TTfH is 
*not* a feminine singular pronominal suffix. If it were, the sentence 
really would be confusing.  However, I believe it is just a morphological 
variant of the 2nd person masculine singular form of the 
perfect/qatal/suffix conjugation. This occurs particularly frequently 
with the verb NaTaN, and is a real pain in the neck if not recognized. If 
the "he" in this word were a feminine singular pronominal suffix, we'd 
expect it to have a mappiq, as it does in Ex. 23:11. The form written 
normally, that is, without the extraneous "he", appears in 1 Sam. 17:28.

I don't know what the historical origin of this variant might be.

>We understand that the subject to be the same person as is
>indicated by the possessive suffix of (aM.  However, it took a
>bit of thinking to jump over the masculine (aM to the feminine
>BaYiT to find the agreement with the objective feminine suffix.
>This caused a bit of difficulty, because we understood (I still
>think, correctly) that that objective suffix, (aM, and BaYiT all
>refer to the same "person".

Agreed.  The sentence is simply: "For (indeed, because) you have 
abandoned your people, the house of Jacob."

>Why would the objective suffix be
>feminine rather than agree in gender with the closest referent,
>which is masculine?  Is it putting more focus on the "person" as
>being "the house of Jacob" than it is on "him/her" being "your
>people"?

No; it's not really an objective suffix.

>It's just a question.  We're not having a real problem
>translating it.

Hope this helps,

Mark Joseph