Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear Patrina,

> Regarding the use of maters as vowel indicators, I'm a little puzzled
> that the spelling of Judah throughout the Tanach is always YHWDH with a
> mater waw (as far as I know... maybe I'm mistaken?).  Hezekiah's seals
> spell Judah as YHDH (without a mater) around 7th century BCE.  If there
> were at least a few spellings of YHDH dotted throughout the Pentateuch,
> Prophets and Writings as well as YHWDH, it would seem reasonable to
> suggest that the defective spellings were older occurences, or that full
> spellings represent later redaction as with the DWD and DWYD examples...
>  it just seems unlikely to me that later redaction would have been 100%
> thorough?!


HH: Here is the first use of the word Judah:

Gen. 29:35 ¶ She conceived again, and when she 
gave birth to a son she said,  "This time I will 
praise the LORD." So she named him Judah. Then 
she stopped having children.

HH: So the name Judah is based on the idea of 
praise, which is the verb YDH. This may 
originally have been a "Pe waw" verb (GKC #69a), 
so the letter waw in Judah may be original. It is 
hard to understand the exact derivation involved 
in the noun.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard



> Patrina Nuske Small
> Adelaide, South Australia
>
> On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 08:38:41 +0200, "Yigal Levin"
> <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> said:
> >  Hi Tony,
> >
> >  The use of Y as an indicator for the vowel "i" (like most uses of matres
> >  lectonis) is a fairly late developement in Hebrew. We find none in the
> >  Gezer
> >  Calendar, few in the Mesha inscription or the Tell Dan inscription (yes,
> >  I
> >  know that these are Moabite and Aramaic, but they reflect the same
> >  trends),
> >  more in the Siloam, Ekron and in 7-6 century ostraca, bullae etc.
> >
> >  The text of most of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History is
> >  also
> >  7-6th centuries, so it does use matres lectonis in regular words. But,
> >  presumably, a name like David already had a standardized spelling from
> >  the
> >  previous period (it's also spelled "defectively" - without the Y - in the
> >  Tell Dan inscription). However, in the Second Temple period the Y was
> >  added
> >  even in such names - hence the spelling DVYD in Chronicles, Zachariah
> >  etc.
> >  This is also the spelling in later Hebrew - the Mishnah, Talmud, and
> >  synagogue inscriptions.
> >
> >  The fact that there is one case of DVYD in Kings is probably because a
> >  late
> >  copyist mistakenly used the spelling that was common in his day. The fact
> >  that such "pre-exilic" prophetic books like Hosea and Amos also use DVYD
> >  probably says something about the redaction history of those books (or of
> >  "The Twelve" as a whole).
> >
> >  Yigal
> >
> >  ----- Original Message -----
> >  From: "Tony Costa" <tmcos AT rogers.com>
> >  To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> >  Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 4:55 AM
> >  Subject: [b-hebrew] DVD or DVYD?
> >
> >
> >  > Dear Friends, I noticed that there appears to be a variant in the MT for
> >  the name David. In some places David is spelled DVD (eg. 2 Sam.7:5;
> >  Ps.89:21), while in others it is spelled DVYD (eg.1 Chron.15:1-3;
> >  Hos.3:5),
> >  with the yod between the vav (or waw) and daleth. Why the inclusion of
> >  the
> >  yod? Is this a later development as a variant in the name of David? BDB
> >  (sv.DVD) states that these variants of David can occur together in the
> >  same
> >  text. For instance, while the books of Kings uses DVD, there is an
> >  exception
> >  in 1 Kings 3:14 where DVYD is used. Is this a late development or was it
> >  simply the case that this name could be spelled both ways. Many thanks.
> >  >
> >  > Tony Costa
> --
>   Patrina
>   patrina AT bestmail.us
>
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