Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

> Subject: Psalm 52.5
> From: "Tim Redmond" <timr AT net2000ke.com>
> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:02:19 +0300

> Could someone kindly explain the reason for the dagesh in the resh
> in the second word <resh-ayin> in Psalm 52.5?

Normal "conjunctive dagesh" strongly resembles junctural gemination
phenomena in living languages (such as the "Raddoppiamento Sintattico"
of Italian discussed in _Prosodic Phonology_ by Marina Nespor and
Irene Vogel, 1986).  Such normal conjunctive dagesh is therefore not
very mysterious, and most probably the orthography is intended to
denote geminated consonants here.

However, Resh-with-Dagesh is a more sporadic phenomenon which is less
clearly explainable (normally, of course, resh doesn't take dagesh at
all).  I remember looking at the cases of 'Aleph with dagesh, and
there all the occurrences seemed to naturally fall into a few simple
patterns (even though there was still no clear reason "why" a few such
forms had 'Aleph with dagesh, while the vast majority did not).  I
just pulled up the cases of Resh-dagesh in the BHS e-text, and here
there doesn't seem to be much clear patterning at all:

Internal:

 1Sa 1. 6              har:.`imAh: 
 1Sa10.24              har:.'iytEm
 1Sa17.25              har:.'iytEm
 2Kg 6.32              har:.'iytEm
 Pro14.10      yowde`a mAr:at nap.Sow
 Eze16. 4   lo'-kAr:at SAr:ek
 Pro 3. 8     t:.hiy l.SAr:EkA w.Siq:uwy 
 Can 5. 2              SEr:o'Siy

Juncture:

 Ezr 9. 6      l.ma`.lAh r:o'S 
 Hab 3.13     mAHa6c.t:A r:o'S
 2Ch26.10  k:i6y miq.nEh-r:ab
 Jer39.12      m.'u6wmAh r:A`
 Pro11.21   lo'-yin:AqEh r:A` w.zEra` 
 Ps 52. 5      'Ahab.t:A r:A` miT:owb
 Job39. 9      h.ayo'bEh r:eym `Ab.dEkA
 Pro15. 1       ma`.anEh-r:ak. yASiyb

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/