Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Yigal,

>> HH: Counting by soph pasuq, I seem to get eleven MT verse divisions
>> including Ex 20:2 and 20:16, which I count as the last commandment: 2,
>3-5,
>> 6, 7, 8-11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17.
>
>Assuming you're using BHS, isn't vs. 17 ("Don't covet...") the 10th
>commandment?

HH: Yes.

 In any case, your first mistake is in assuming that the "colon"
>(:) is the soph pasuq. It isn't. The actual soph pasuq is the vertical line
>(like a meteg) under the word.

HH: GKC 15f 1 identifies the vertical line as silluq. They call the colon
soph pasuq. But whatever, I see the footnotes in BHS and the point.

 Look at the word )l-pny at the end of BHS's
>vs. 3. The line under the nun is a soph pasuq. The critical note b says that
>BHS's deletion of the : was according to Leningrad, but that most
>manuscripts include it. The same is true at the end of vss. 4, 8, 9, and 10.
>That's the "extra" 5, making 16.

HH: Right.

>Now look at the nun in )l-pny again. There's also a dot above it. This is a
>revi`a, which indicates a minor division in the middle of a verse. The same
>at the end of verse 4. Now obviously a word can't be both at the end of a
>verse, as shown by the soph pasuq, and in the middle. This is what I mean by
>there being two separate sets of markings superimposed on the same verses,
>giving two seperate ways of dividing the verses.

HH: Yes, I see.

>> HH: Right, this is the one I was counting above. I don't see your first
>> type of division. How is it determined?

>Now do you see it?

HH: Yes, thank you.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard