Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tigran Aivazian <tigran AT bibles.org.uk>]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Dave Washburn wrote:

> On Thursday 17 March 2005 12:54, wattswestmaas wrote:
> > Hallo, Could someone perhaps offer some ideas as to why the 'mem' in the
> > word for: 'increase' is written this way?
> > Thankyou, Chris.
>
> Based on the Qere correction by the Masoretes, it looks like a simple scribal
> error.
>
> Incidentally, if anybody uses the free Westminster Leningrad Codex module, the
> Qere here has an error in it.  Rather than showing the final mem, it shows
> exactly the same form as the Qere, but with a different accent.  If somebody
> from that project is on this list, that's an FYI.  If you can tell me how to
> fix it in my copy (I'm using GnomeSword with the Ezra SIL font) that would be
> a Very Good Thing (TM).

I have checked the actual facsimile of L and also the reasonably latest 
(4.3) Westminster Leningrad Codex source and confirm that, indeed, WLC 
doesn't match B19A at Isa 9:6 wrt final mem.

The PDF version of WLC is still at v4.2 at the moment but I hope to find 
some time to move it to 4.3 soon.

I can't remember if the Michigan encoding actually allows such things like 
"m<EOW>" i.e. to force a final mem in the middle of the word. If it 
doesn't, then I will manually fix this for Isa 9:6 when I upload 4.3 
version of WLC-B19A.pdf to www.bibles.org.uk.

Shalom
Tigran