Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jason Hare" <jason AT hareplay.com>]

Karl,

This question was originally mine. I would love to get a response from your
investigation. The fact is, the explanations that I received seemed
precursory and premature. I am not convinced that the endings of

):ELOH"YMOW [eloheimo]
and
C:BFX"YMOW [tz'vacheimo]

are by some sort of analogy to KMW-, as in K.FMOWKF [kamocha] or K.FMOWHW.
[kamohu]. I think it may be possible that they were lengthened from the
regular -av ending to the -eimo ending for poetic purposes, but is this seen
anywhere else? Beyond that, it would surely not be done for rhyming purposes
(for this is not how Hebrew poetry is formed), so what would be the real
function of this, given that the respective phrases are rather long?

Regards,
Jason

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 8:34 PM
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] question from parshat ha'azinu


> Dear Trevor:
>
> When I got a list of the verses that have the -MW suffix, I then wrote
down my initial
> impressions of its uses. Your questions below give me more food for
thought.
>
> In a quick search where -MW- is used as an infix between a preceeding word
and a
> personal pronoun suffix, it is always appended on K- prefix. This appears
to be used
> over a hundred times. It is sometimes used where one could expect the K-
to be
> prefixed to the following word possibly making it emphatic, sometimes as
stand
> alone, as in "Who is like you?".
>
> What you pointed out may change my initial response.
>
> I'll have to get back later on further impressions.
>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.