Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Moshe Shulman <mshulman AT ix.netcom.com>]

At 02:24 AM 12/5/2003 -0800, you wrote:
> On 04/12/2003 17:58, Karl Randolph wrote:
> > Peter:
> > Does the DSS have a K)RW or KRW, a medial Alep or not? It is my 
> > impression that a medial Alep is seldom dropped, which would indicate to 
> > me that we have a hapax legomenon here. If DSS omit the midial Alep, then 
> > we are dealing with KRH.
> > Karl W. Randolph.
> The only DSS reading I know of is from the Nahal Hever fragment shown in 
> http://www.torahresource.com/Newsletter/Ps22.16.pdf, which reads kaf - 
> alef - resh - vav. I agree with you that this implies some kind of hapax, 
> but K)R might be a variant of KRH. It seems likely that this was an 
> original biliteral root KR which became triliteralised in various more or 
> less synonymous ways e.g. KRH, KWR (which BDB gives as the root of M:KORAH 
> and M:KERAH) and perhaps also K)R. Compare DKK = DWK = DK) = DKH.

The reading is K)RW, and this has some serious difficulties with it, since 
the aleph makes it a poor conjugation for the verb KRH. I have always 
considered this another example of poor writing skills, and the correct 
reading should be K)RY, the last letter being an elongated yod, a very 
common situation in the DSS. Otherwise we have a verb without a root.