Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From Daniel Walin <danserve4x AT yahoo.com> =====
>I
>apologize for not transliterating the Hebrew, but I am
>unaware of the system used by the list.

There is a recommended method, but pretty much everyone does what's right in 
their own eyes :-)
>
[snipped]
>
>If all three uses of the suffixes do in fact refer
>back to the "my people," why is one suffix plural
>while the other two are singular?  Is there a reason
>for this, or is it a grammatically inconsistent aspect
>of the language?

Good eye! It's important to watch for this sort of thing. Honestly, I don't 
know why the number changes. 'am is collective, so I think either pronoun 
form 
should be OK, but there's no clear reason to use both. I would expect 
singulars across the board, but I wouldn't be surprised to see plurals. The 
combination does seem odd, though. Notice a bit further down in v. 9 that the 
forms are plural. Here, the reference is to bne-yisrael, which is clearly 
plural. tsa'aqa is used in both vv., which isn't an obvious reason to use 
plural in v. 7, but I'd probably think about the possible connection a while, 
especially since the anomalous pronoun is attached to this noun in particular.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics