Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Hi Chris,

While the word "Emun" in Deut. 32:20, which seems to be a masculine of
"Emunah", seems unique, the feminine is used in verse 4. Isaiah 25:1 uses
both - "Emunah Omen". And the masc. plural "Emunim" is used 6 times, as well
as the construct "Emuney" in 2 Sam. 20:19.

Coming back to Deut. 32:20, my guess is that "Emun" is not really masculine,
but simply a cut-off form of Emunah, which the poet used to fit the metre.

Place names can be either masculine or feminine, but remember that both
"city" (Ir and "land" )Erec are feminine.

Yigal


----- Original Message -----
From: "wattswestmaas" <wattswestmaas AT eircom.net>
To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 2:03 PM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Feminine of noun abstacts that stand alone.


> A two part question,,,
>
> Does the FEMINIE of a noun (especially when in most instances the noun is
> descended directly from the verb) sometimes carry the abstract idea of a
> more concrete definition?   I also think on some of the place names in
both
> exodus and numbers that are in the feminine, when a masculine would seem
> just as appropriate.
>
> My second question INDIRECTLY related asks why the word for 'faith' in
Deut
> 32:20 is masculine since this is the ONLY occurence of the word in Masc,
and
> I see no grammatical reason for this.  I have an archaic definition of the
> words in both masc and fem that say the former implies 'Established' and
the
> latter 'to be fimly convinced'' but this is an after the fact matter and a
> classic tautology.
>
> Thankyou Chris.
>
>
>
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