Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

A follow-up to my previous reply on this one: The explanation could be 
purely phonological. Now actually your quote below is incorrect 
(compared with printed BHS) because you have omitted the dagesh in 
B."YT, which is unusual I think after a word ending in a vowel sound, 
)I$.FH , where there is no disjunctive accent; so we can take this as 
dagesh forte rather than dagesh lene. I would suggest that this B."YT 
is actually a contraction of B:B"YT , the first B deliberately without 
dagesh as after a vowel sound; then (by a phonological rule) the 
voiced shwa becomes silent and we are left with two identical 
consonants which (by a regular though not invariant rule) merge 
together with a dagesh forte. Of course this case could simply be a 
slightly irregular "dagesh forte conjunctivum" as described by GKC 
20c. Is my alternative feasible? I'm not yet sure. It doesn't work for 
the other examples quoted in GKC 118g, but maybe GKC avoided listing 
the Ruth example because of this alternative.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Ruth 1:9
Author:  zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph at internet
Date:    19/03/1999 11:31


The second clause in Ruth 1:9 is the source of the next 
question.  The clause is:

UWMCE)NF MeNUWXFH )I$$FH B"YT )IY$FH.

The first two words did not cause a lot of problems, and the 
group seemed to handle the third okay.  But the real confusion 
came in determining how to relate the last two words, which make 
up a construct chain, to the rest of the clause.  One of their 
attempts treated the chain like it had a preposition beth 
attached to it: "And you (pl) find a resting-place, each woman 
_in_ the house of her husband."  Another option put forward was 
to treat the chain as if it were in apposition to the resting 
place: "And you (pl) find a resting-place, each woman, (namely) 
the house of her husband."  Are they missing an obvious clue 
here?  If so, I sure don't see it.  How would you handle this 
clause?

Paul

--
Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran 
Ibanag Translation Project
Cabagan, Philippines

zellmer AT faith.edu.ph





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